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We've been waiting over a decade for regulation to come to the social media space. Why do you think the government will be any different with AI?

• hollerith 3y ago
  The embrace of social media by the mainstream population was probably a mistake, but it is a mistake that our society can recover from whereas if humanity makes a mistake with an AI that is more capable than the most capable human institutions, there's no recovery because there is a good chance there is no longer anybody left alive. More to the point, decision makers, e.g., in the US Congress, who were contemplating regulation of social media 10 years or 5 years ago knew that any harms caused by social media could be recovered from and can be probably persuaded that a mistake during "frontier" AI research probably cannot be recovered from. The people pushing for regulation of AI research do not need to convince the decision makers to the point of certainty. If the average decision maker for example comes to believe that there is a 10% change that AI research will kill everyone (if left unregulated too long) they will shut down "frontier" AI research even it means lots of Silicon-Valley types and AI-sector investors get very sore at them because most decision makers (at least in the US) have grandchildren or the hopes of having grandchildren one day. This is in contrast to the situation with social media 5 or 10 years ago, in which if a decision maker is only 10% certain that social media is harming the population, he's not likely to see that as a sufficient reason for making enemies in Silicon Valley and in those invested in Silicon Valley and as sufficient reason for doing the work of getting a law passed.