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The way I see it is rather: The past has shown that for each technology, there were "worriers". Imagine a distribution graph with the x-axis being the scale fr

by cauch 2y ago

The way I see it is rather: The past has shown that for each technology, there were "worriers". Imagine a distribution graph with the x-axis being the scale from "very worried" to "confident in the future". For each technology, there is a bell-shape distribution. So, for this technology, such distribution has to exist. The question is: where are the natural worriers? can you point to them? Because if you cannot distinguish the natural pedestal that will always exist, then it feels like you are giving credit to this pedestal rather than giving credit to real worry. It would be very useful to see those distributions for different technologies or events and, based on the known conclusion, see if some shapes are indicating that the "worriers" are mainly the natural left-tail of the distribution. For me, what push me to keep away from that debate and not mangle to the people interested in this subject (even if it turns out there are reason to worry) is the fact that a big part of people worried about "superintelligent AI threatening humankind" are usual quite clueless on societal dangers otherwise. They usually are supporting views close in philosophy to tech bros/bro-science, utilitarians or libertarians, which is all showing a pretty naive understanding of the complexity of society.

haswell 2y ago
I think that understanding the meta-phenomenon of worriers vs. non-worriers is interesting in its own right. But independent of this, I took the original post to be focusing on the fact that there are better and worse reasons to worry or not to worry. So maybe someone is predisposed to worry about things, but understanding why they worry (and how likely the “why” is to be valid) is more important than the fact that they’re worrying. Conversely, examining why an optimist is optimistic is also important, because if their optimism is rooted in specious arguments and conclusions, their status as a “non worrier” is less indicative of reason to care about about their lack of worry relative to the distribution of worriers. In other words, I think it’s an interesting way to think about the people involved in the worry/non-worry, but not likely to get us closer to an answer about whether or not anyone should worry. Clearly there are situations that we know enough about to warrant a high degree of concern regardless of the distribution of worry vs. non-worry (see: climate change). I think a major issue with the AI subject is a lack of consensus on what exactly people are worried about, and worries ranging from near term loss of employment and other immediate downsides to the eventual extinction of the human race. I don’t think the “threatens all humankind” concerns are the most worrisome because they’re by far the most far fetched. There’s a whole lot of potential harm between where we are today and those extreme outcomes, but those extremes tend to get the most airtime and subsequent dismissal, and overshadow the more realistic and mundane concerns.
- cauch 2y ago
  It's a detail, but I disagree with the fact that looking at who is worrying is not a good element to evaluate if the problem in question has legitimate arguments to generate worry. If someone usually optimistic is worried about the subject X, it is a good indication that this subject X has good arguments, as it has convinced the optimistic person. If the subject Y is a worry only for the "worriers", then it is a good indication that this subject Y does not have good arguments, as it failed to convinced people who are more difficult to get worried. (and, sure, one can talk about "are people informed" or whatever, but this is a second order effect and is just a slightly disguised they-disagree-because-i-am-a-misunderstood-genius fallacy) For the AI subject: you cannot put in the same bulk people who worries that AI will be used tomorrow for bad things and people who worries that AI will become intelligent and be a threat for humanity, because those are two things very different with very different consequences. What you need to do in case of worry of bad usage of AI is very different of what you need to do in case of threat for humanity, sometimes opposed (bad usage is about putting rules and fair access, while threat for humanity is about forbidding or controlling fundamental research). It's a bit like if in a parallel universe, someone says "people are worried about immigration. Sure, some people are worried that migrants are invading us, and others that migrants are being treated unfairly. But they are worried, so it is the proof that worrying about immigration is legitimate, and any criticism about these worries are just people who cannot have a logical argument". For example, I don't think people who are worried that AI can have a bad usage and that we should be careful about that are feeling attacked by the "coffeepocalypse" argument. People that are worried about a bad usage of AI are not worried about AI itself, they are worried about a bad usage of technology in general, and it includes thousands of things that don't even involved LLM or recent development in AI. I think it is more directed at the lesswrong-pseudo-intellectuals who think they are deep and smarter than everyone else when they are just playing around with basic concepts and misguided ego trip.

by cauch 2y ago

haswell 2y ago

I think that understanding the meta-phenomenon of worriers vs. non-worriers is interesting in its own right. But independent of this, I took the original post to be focusing on the fact that there are better and worse reasons to worry or not to worry. So maybe someone is predisposed to worry about things, but understanding why they worry (and how likely the “why” is to be valid) is more important than the fact that they’re worrying. Conversely, examining why an optimist is optimistic is also important, because if their optimism is rooted in specious arguments and conclusions, their status as a “non worrier” is less indicative of reason to care about about their lack of worry relative to the distribution of worriers. In other words, I think it’s an interesting way to think about the people involved in the worry/non-worry, but not likely to get us closer to an answer about whether or not anyone should worry. Clearly there are situations that we know enough about to warrant a high degree of concern regardless of the distribution of worry vs. non-worry (see: climate change). I think a major issue with the AI subject is a lack of consensus on what exactly people are worried about, and worries ranging from near term loss of employment and other immediate downsides to the eventual extinction of the human race. I don’t think the “threatens all humankind” concerns are the most worrisome because they’re by far the most far fetched. There’s a whole lot of potential harm between where we are today and those extreme outcomes, but those extremes tend to get the most airtime and subsequent dismissal, and overshadow the more realistic and mundane concerns.

cauch 2y ago
It's a detail, but I disagree with the fact that looking at who is worrying is not a good element to evaluate if the problem in question has legitimate arguments to generate worry. If someone usually optimistic is worried about the subject X, it is a good indication that this subject X has good arguments, as it has convinced the optimistic person. If the subject Y is a worry only for the "worriers", then it is a good indication that this subject Y does not have good arguments, as it failed to convinced people who are more difficult to get worried. (and, sure, one can talk about "are people informed" or whatever, but this is a second order effect and is just a slightly disguised they-disagree-because-i-am-a-misunderstood-genius fallacy) For the AI subject: you cannot put in the same bulk people who worries that AI will be used tomorrow for bad things and people who worries that AI will become intelligent and be a threat for humanity, because those are two things very different with very different consequences. What you need to do in case of worry of bad usage of AI is very different of what you need to do in case of threat for humanity, sometimes opposed (bad usage is about putting rules and fair access, while threat for humanity is about forbidding or controlling fundamental research). It's a bit like if in a parallel universe, someone says "people are worried about immigration. Sure, some people are worried that migrants are invading us, and others that migrants are being treated unfairly. But they are worried, so it is the proof that worrying about immigration is legitimate, and any criticism about these worries are just people who cannot have a logical argument". For example, I don't think people who are worried that AI can have a bad usage and that we should be careful about that are feeling attacked by the "coffeepocalypse" argument. People that are worried about a bad usage of AI are not worried about AI itself, they are worried about a bad usage of technology in general, and it includes thousands of things that don't even involved LLM or recent development in AI. I think it is more directed at the lesswrong-pseudo-intellectuals who think they are deep and smarter than everyone else when they are just playing around with basic concepts and misguided ego trip.