What if the actions that benefits billions of people alive today is slowing down AI development?
I think this debate is oversimplifying the situation by focusing on the trade-off between two different factors:
Benefits to people currently alive such as better medicine
Harm to future people via extinction
The situation is more complex and involves:
Benefits to current people
Harms to current people
Benefits to future people
Harms to future people
I think, in general, we should usually take actions that benefit the billions of people alive today, or people who will soon exist, rather than assuming that everyone alive today should get negligible weight in the utilitarian calculus because of highly speculative considerations about what might occur in millions of years.
Even if we focus solely on people currently alive, pausing or regulating AI progress could be net positive: although current people stand to benefit from scientific breakthroughs from AI, fast AI development also creates risks like mass unemployment, disruptions of elections, concentration of power, increasing inequality, and generally making it hard for governments to react to the situation. Also human extinction would negatively affect current people by curtailing their lifespan.
I doubt the race to build AGI is best explained by a desire to build AI that benefits the lives of people alive today or in the future.
Instead, a better explanation seems to be individuals, companies, or researchers wanting the prestige of developing breakthroughs, big tech companies simply trying to make a profit and, an arms race dynamic between AI companies because of a lack of coordination to control the rate of AI progress.
What if the actions that benefits billions of people alive today is slowing down AI development?
I think this debate is oversimplifying the situation by focusing on the trade-off between two different factors:
Benefits to people currently alive such as better medicine
Harm to future people via extinction
The situation is more complex and involves:
Benefits to current people
Harms to current people
Benefits to future people
Harms to future people
Even if we focus solely on people currently alive, pausing or regulating AI progress could be net positive: although current people stand to benefit from scientific breakthroughs from AI, fast AI development also creates risks like mass unemployment, disruptions of elections, concentration of power, increasing inequality, and generally making it hard for governments to react to the situation. Also human extinction would negatively affect current people by curtailing their lifespan.
I doubt the race to build AGI is best explained by a desire to build AI that benefits the lives of people alive today or in the future.
Instead, a better explanation seems to be individuals, companies, or researchers wanting the prestige of developing breakthroughs, big tech companies simply trying to make a profit and, an arms race dynamic between AI companies because of a lack of coordination to control the rate of AI progress.