Comment by joshtbradley
2 months ago
Im not resisting that at all. I fully support AI safety research. The think mechanistic interoperability is a fascinating and fruitful field.
What I’m resisting are one sided views of AI being either pure evil, or on the verge of AGI. Neither are true and it obstructs thoughtful discussion.
I did get into what aboutism, I didn’t realize it at the time. I did use flawed logic.
To refine my point, I should have just focused on cars and other technology. AI amplifies humanity for both good and bad. It comes with risk and utility. And I never see articles presenting both.
I don’t think many people are quite that myopic in their views.
Many people are. Several of my immediate family members. And several prominent intellectuals including Yudkowsky and Hinton, both fathers of the field.
Yudkowsky wrote a 250 page book to say "we must limit all commercial GPU clusters to a maximum of 8." That is terrifyingly myopic, and look at the reviews on Amazon. 4.6 stars (574). That is what scares me.
Let me rephrase: most people aren’t that myopic and the viewpoint that’s driving AI development definitely skews more towards the “no restrictions or limitations of any kind” end of the spectrum anyway. You’d have a point if AI development was being choked in some way, but it’s quite the opposite:
I don’t think you need to worry that the other extreme exists as well. The obscene flow of money into AI at every stage has thus far gone almost entirely unchallenged.