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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.
Thank goodness for China, who has the freedom from bougie liberal moralizing, no Mouse-fueled Suffocating IP-law, and no social friction about power usage of datacenters (Building datacenters is actually a convenience for their powergrid because they produce so much excess power)
The funniest thing about China is that they have the highest level of popular optimism about AI (85ish%) and are one of the nations most convinced in AI's ability to replace their jobs. I guess they don't like their jobs much.
Well their government has also made noises about using automation and AI to achieve Communism, so they've at least some idea they won't starve in the streets and might actually achieve utopia. Also for most Chinese things have only ever got better so they've cause for optimism.
Don't forget hedonic adaptation. Suppose we all end up at "Elites end up locked-in forever but they do redistribute enough production to salve their consciences", although in one country they call the elites "party leaders" and the redistribution "communism" while in the other we add "the wealthy" and call it "universal basic income". There's a wide range of redistribution levels that would be upgrades (even PPP adjusted) for the median Chinese citizen but downgrades for the median American.
I don’t disagree but the existing vibe is different. In China the ruling party has genuinely improved most people’s lives significantly in the last thirty years. You can (quite fairly) say that was by reversing policies that it itself implemented, but most people don’t care to think much about things that happened long before they were born.
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