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I just got done listening to Eliezer Yudkowski on EconTalk (https://www.econtalk.org/eliezer-yudkowsky-on-the-dangers-of-ai/).
I say this as someone who's mostly convinced of Big Yud's doomerism: Good lord, what a train wreck of a conversation. I'll save you the bother of listening to it -- Russ Roberts starts by asking a fairly softball question of (paraphrasing) "Why do you think the AIs will kill all of humanity?" And Yudkowski responds by asking Roberts "Explain why you think they won't, and I'll poke your argument until it falls apart." Russ didn't really give strong arguments, and the rest of the interview repeated this pattern a couple times. THIS IS NOT THE WAY HUMANS HAVE CONVERSATIONS! Your goal was not logically demolish Russ Roberts' faulty thinking, but to use Roberts as a sounding board to get your ideas to his huge audience, and you completely failed. Roberts wasn't convinced by the end, and I'm sure EY came off as a crank to anyone who was new to him.
I hope EY lurks here, or maybe someone close to him does. Here's my advice: if you want to convince people who are not already steeped in your philosophy you need to have a short explanation of your thesis that you can rattle off in about 5 minutes that doesn't use any jargon the median congresscritter doesn't already know. You should workshop it on people who don't know who you are, don't know any math or computer programming and who haven't read the Sequences, and when the next podcast host asks you why AIs will kill us all, you should be able to give a tight, logical-ish argument that gets the conversation going in a way that an audience can find interesting. 5 minutes can't cover everything so different people will poke and prod your argument in various ways, and that's when you fill in the gaps and poke holes in their thinking, something you did to great effect with Dwarkesh Patel (https://youtube.com/watch?v=41SUp-TRVlg&pp=ygUJeXVka293c2tp). That was a much better interview, mostly because Patel came in with much more knowledge and asked much better questions. I know you're probably tired of going over the same points ad nauseam, but every host will have audience members who've never heard of you or your jargon, and you have about 5 minutes to hold their interest or they'll press "next".
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Yudkowsky. The logic is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the arguments will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Eliezer’s transhumanist outlook, which is deftly woven into his personality- his personal philosophy draws heavily from science-fiction literature, for instance. The rationalists understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these arguments, to realise that they're not just true- they say something deep about REALITY. As a consequence people who dislike Yudkowsky truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the mathematics behind Eliezer’s probabilistic catchphrase "Rational agents don’t update in a predictable direction,” which itself is a cryptic reference to Bayesian statistics. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Big Yud’s genius intellect unfolds itself on their laptop screens. What fools.. how I pity them..
Okay okay, I know that pasta is typically used to make fun of people, but I really think it’s true here. Imagine trying to explain to common people the danger of nuclear weapons before Trinity. If they don’t understand the concept of nuclear binding energy, and the raw power of uncontrolled nuclear fission has not yet been demonstrated, you’re not going to be able to get through to a skeptic unless you explain the entire field of nuclear physics. It is trivial that an uncontrolled superintelligent optimization process kills us. All of the interesting disagreements are about whether or not attempts at control will fail. That is why Eliezer wanted to steer the conversation that direction.
Nukes actually seem pretty easy to explain to anyone that has a passing familiarity with explosives and poison. Really big bomb that poisons the area for a few decades.
I think ops original point stands pretty well, that could get good mileage out of transferring understanding from existing stuff to explain the danger of AI. Terrorism is one of the easiest goto examples. Really rich terrorist, with top tier talents in all fields.
Sure, you can describe a nuclear bomb like that, but could you explain them why it would be likely to work, and why it is something they should find likely and concerning, and not just a lurid fantasy?
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Except it doesn't even do that unless specifically made to do so by triggering a surface burst instead of the normal air burst. See f.ex. the post apocalyptic wasteland known as Hiroshima (current pop. 1.2 million).
Limiting its destructive power at that!
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Ah, so it's even easier to explain.
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