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Over the last few months, I've followed someone named Alexander Kruel on Substack. Every single day, he writes a post about 10 important things that happened that day - typically AI breakthroughs, but also other of his pet concerns including math, anti-wokeness, nuclear power, and the war in Ukraine. It's pretty amazing that he is able to unfailingly produce this content every day, and I'm in awe of his productivity.
Unfortunately, since I get this e-mail every morning, my information diet is becoming very dark.
The advances in AI in the last year have been staggering. Furthermore, it seems that there is almost no one pumping the breaks. We seemed doomed to an AI arms race, with corporations and states pursuing AI with no limits.
In today's email, Kruel quotes Elizier who says:
Elizier is ahead of the curve. Where Elizier was in 2015, I am now. AI will destroy the world we know. Nate Soares, director of MIRI, is similarly apocalyptic.
What comes after Artificial General Intelligence? There are many predictions. But I expect things to develop in ways that no one expects. It truly will be a singularity, with very few trends continuing unaltered. I feel like a piece of plankton, caught in the swells of a giant sea. The choices and decisions I make today will likely have very little impact on what my life looks like in 20 years. Everything will be different then.
So, party until the lights go out? How do I deal with my AI-driven existential crisis?
The best I can do for you is plant seeds of doubt with a list of questions.
What is the similarity between Yudkowsky and his milieu and a new religious movement or a millenarian movement? What is the propensity for new religious movements to predict a near- to medium-term apocalypse? Is there something in special about the rationalist community that makes rationalists immune to the sociological dynamics that have popped up in other human groups throughout history, and for this group to be so different as to the the first group that is correct about predicting the apocalypse? Is there something about Yudkowsky that makes him more effective at prediction than the cassandras that proceeded him? Is Yudkowsky better at marketing himself than other cassandras? If Yudkowsky is so convinced of an AI apocalypse, then why would he bother inflicting memetic despair on much of humanity during its final moments? Is Yudkowsky more of a sci-fi writer or a domain expert of AGI? Even granting Yudkowsky the title of domain expert in AGI, how frequently do domain experts make inaccurate predicitons in their areas of expertise (think of Malthusian predictions among economists and ecologists, or of sovietologists prior to 1991)?
Yes I agree the track record of domain experts making predictions of doom is very bad. I bring up Yud because he's a member of this community sort of, but the Big Yud and I have arrived at the conclusion relatively independently. I didn't read him, or Alexander Kruel, or Gwern or anybody to arrive at my conclusions. It just seems plain as day to me that the risk of AGI coming in the next decade is very high (say > 50%).
Would Metaculus be a better appeal to authority? The wisdom of crowds has a much better track record.
https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3479/date-weakly-general-ai-is-publicly-known/
"Date Weakly General AI is Publicly Known" poll is now at 2027.
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