The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions
An interesting article, but I think it misses the mark on two things.<p>Firstly, it minimizes the concerns people have over jobs being lost because AI isn&#x27;t around the corner. While a valid point of view, even if many jobs will be lost only in 30-40 years and not in 10-20, isn&#x27;t it something worth thinking about?<p>Secondly, in terms of the AI safety movement, I think he doesn&#x27;t really address the core problems that people raise. From the article:<p>&quot;[ai safety pundits] ignore the fact that if we are able to eventually build such smart devices, the world will have changed significantly by then. We will not suddenly be surprised by the existence of such super-intelligences. They will evolve technologically over time, and our world will come to be populated by many other intelligences, and we will have lots of experience already.&quot;<p>I think this ignores two arguments:<p>1. While his scenario is certainly plausible, the &quot;AI takeoff&quot; scenario, in which an AI becomes super-intelligent via recursive self improvement, is also at least a possibility. This means it&#x27;s worth thinking about, because it negates the &quot;safety&quot; of other tech advances helping.<p>2. Either way, one big concern of the AI safety crowd is that we just don&#x27;t know how much time it will take to &quot;solve&quot; AI safety. Given <i>unlimited</i> computing power now, we would have <i>no way</i> of making the AI have the same goals as us, because we have no idea how to program a safe AI. This is something that might take 10 more years of work in laying down mathematical foundations, or might take 100 years. Nobody knows! That&#x27;s why it&#x27;s important to get this right.<p>The argument from the article is &quot;let&#x27;s now worry, because tech will advance enough by the time we have intelligent AIs&quot;. Well, maybe, but how does that tech advance happen? By people being worried about this problem and working on it! It&#x27;s not magic. You can&#x27;t just assume that the problem will solve itself.