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I'm not suggesting that the cause is unimportant, but maybe the increased respectability has nothing to do with MIRI, and more to do with the increased obviousn

by gress 12y ago

I'm not suggesting that the cause is unimportant, but maybe the increased respectability has nothing to do with MIRI, and more to do with the increased obviousness in the public sphere of both rapid technological advancement, and increased awareness that there is no guarantee that any given technology produces a net benefit. It's still a credit to MIRI/SIAI to have identified and taken this risk seriously.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
If I had to identify a human-life or public-policy issue on the immediate horizon related to computing technologies, and I'd never heard of MIRI, I would have picked automation. Stephen Hawking, at least, when he gets cited, actually referred explicitly to MIRI and FHI in his own editorial on the subject. So he is talking about them specifically. But yes, there are plenty of other important causes, including several (ecological devastation, economic disaster and related wars, automation crises) that stand a decent chance of totally fucking up society before anyone at all gets to the point of "switching on" a dangerous-level AI, Friendly or not. Those should definitely be addressed.