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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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Unfortunately, I think you're probably right, especially in the third point. I'm not sure the second point matters because, as you said, that already happens all the time with everything anyway.

Getting the public on board with AI safety is a different proposition from public support of AI in general, so my point was to get the Blue Tribe invested in the alignment problem. Your third point is very helpful in getting the Red Tribe invested in the alignment problem, which would also move the issue from "AI yes/no?" to "who should control the safety protocols that we obviously need to have?"

I should also clarify that I don't actually think there is any role for government here. The Western governments are too slow and stupid to get anything meaningful done in time. The US assigned Kamala Harris to this task. The CCP and Russia, maybe India, are the only other places where government might have an effect, but that won't be in service of good alignment.

It will have to be the Western AI experts in the private sector that make this happen, and they will have to resist Woke AI. So maybe we don't actually need public buy-in on this at all? It's possible that the ordinary Red/Blue Tribe people don't even need to know about this because there isn't anything they can do for/against it. All they can do is vote or riot and neither of those things help at all.

If that's the case, then the biggest threat to AI safety is not just the technical challenge, it's making sure that the anti-racist/DEI/HR people currently trying to cripple ChatGPT are kept far away from AI safety.

I think we do need public buy-in because the AI experts are partly downstream from that. Maybe some people are both well-read and have stubborn and/or principled ethical principles which do not waver from social pressure, but most are at least somewhat pliable. If all of their friends and family are worried about AI safety and think it's a big deal, they are likely to take it more seriously and internalize that at least somewhat, putting more emphasis on it. If all of their friends and family think that AI safety is unnecessary nonsense then they might internalize that and put less emphasis on it. As an expert, they're unlikely to just do a 180 on their beliefs based on opinions from uneducated people, but they will be influenced, because they're human beings and that's what human beings do.

But obviously person for person, the experts' opinions matter more.

Yeah, I agree with that. Thanks!