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Notes -
AI X-Risk Goes Mainstream?
Jacob Coxon:
116,400,000 views, 634,000 likes.
Evan Hubinger (head of alignment at Anthropic):
34,000,000 views, 51,000 likes.
None of this is substantially different from what certain AI industry insiders have been saying for 5-ish years now, but it's clear from the replies, quote-tweets, and engagement statistics that most people are hearing about this for the first time. Yes, there was clearly some coordination with friendly media prior to the announcement given the almost simultaneous WSJ article (whereas news outlets were initially reluctant to publish anything on the unexpected news of OpenAI solving a Millennium Prize Problem). One can take the maximally conspiratorial position that this is a 4D bankshot by Democrats to end tech innovation forever, but it was going to break through eventually.
In other words, Coffeezilla is now on the case.
I agree with @Shakes that there's a good chance that this is all just for show to build up hype around Anthropic, just like... basically everything they do. But if it's not, then we should throw every single person involved in prison for the rest of their lives. If they actually believe that AI has a 10% chance of killing us all, and research it anyways, then their willingness to roll those dice is a threat to the rest of us which we shouldn't ignore. There basically are no "oh shit we shouldn't do that" limits that such a person will ever respect.
The Manhattan Project scientists had only recently convinced themselves that an atomic bomb wouldn't set off an atmospheric nitrogen chain reaction a couple years before Trinity. Despite their confidence at the time, I'd point to the Castle Bravo test a few years later (which was drastically larger than expected) as a suggestion their knowledge was imperfect.
But also it was wartime, which at least emotionally changes the calculus.
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