If you want someone to compress and communicate their views on the future, whether they anticipate everyone will be dead within a few decades because of AI seems like a pretty important thing to know. And it’s natural to find your way from that to asking for a probability. But I think that shortcut isn’t actually helpful, and it’s more productive to just ask something like “Do you anticipate that, because of AI, everyone will be dead within the next few decades?”. Someone can still give a probability if they want, but it’s more natural to give a less precise answer like “probably not” or a conditional answer like “I dunno, depends on whether <thing happens>” or to avoid the framing like “well, I don’t think we’re literally going to die, but”.
If you want someone to compress and communicate their views on the future, whether they anticipate everyone will be dead within a few decades because of AI seems like a pretty important thing to know. And it’s natural to find your way from that to asking for a probability. But I think that shortcut isn’t actually helpful, and it’s more productive to just ask something like “Do you anticipate that, because of AI, everyone will be dead within the next few decades?”. Someone can still give a probability if they want, but it’s more natural to give a less precise answer like “probably not” or a conditional answer like “I dunno, depends on whether <thing happens>” or to avoid the framing like “well, I don’t think we’re literally going to die, but”.