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Why Would AI Want to Kill Us? With Nate Soares

Why Would AI Want to Kill Us? With Nate Soares

Into The Machine with Tobias Rose-Stockwell vor 1 Monat

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43:58

It has been a huge week for AI safety.

For those of us deeply concerned about this historically niche
cause, it has felt a bit like one’s cult emo band has suddenly
rocketed to the top of the charts. People suddenly care, a lot.
And for good reason.

The principal reason is this tweet — the most viral tweet in
recent memory — suggesting that the frontier labs do not have it
figured out, and that we are on the edge of a dangerous
precipice. (FWIW, I tend to agree with the tweet’s concerns.)

Calibrating risk is a difficult thing. We look for experts who
can tell us how bad things are. With little evidence of our own
we’re forced to look for proxies in knowledgable folks. In this
case, the most knowledgable folks I know are desperate for a
functioning governmental body that can effectively slow down the
pace of AI development. No one has it figured out.

Beneath this, I am not convinced artificial minds will kill us
imminently. But I do believe we need to have a clear and sober
discourse on what types of AI alignment efforts may or may not be
working.

In line with this, today I’m publishing a conversation on one
(arguably very edgy) side of the debate — with Nate Soares,
president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Nate
wrote the book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, along with
his coauthor Eliezer Yudkowsky. I wanted to probe the dimensions
of his views here, and I think it is a helpful part of the
discourse. I do not believe, as he does, that AI is an inevitable
doomsday device, but I do think his position is an important one
to explore.

I plan to follow up with voices who might counter his particular
perspective and legibly suggest the ways he might be wrong.
Because I want him to be wrong.

As always, thanks for listening.

A small ask:

The irony is not lost on me in trying to critique the algorithms
while still being dependent upon them to reach the right
audience.

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