I’m surprised I can use phrases like “could lose control over” at all. Then I talk about a candidate who’s doing something closer to an AI safety agenda, including “accountability for mass damages”, instead of x-risk irrelevant priorities like banning chatbot medical advice.
I’m not pushing my luck… like I’m not asking people to agree to something like “I’m more worried about human extinction than unemployment”. But I’m discussing AI safety agenda, and getting there by saying I’m worried about “not controlling” AI. I think that’s un-mundane.
Most of the anti-AI sentiment has to do with its use by large companies, governments, employers, etc. All of these are outside of the personal control of anyone you’re talking to, and that’s what “loss of control” over AI means to normies. AI actually taking over the world is such a weird idea that most people wouldn’t even think of that unless they are talking about a movie.
I’m reminded of the UFO enthusiasts who saw that a lot of astronomers are concerned about “the UFO problem”, and concluded that astronomers think UFOs are spaceships. What it actually meant was that astronomers rejected the spaceship idea so strongly that to an astronomer, “the UFO problem” means “the problem that people keep believing in UFOs”.
Anecdotally when I talk to normal people about AI the main questions are “Will AI take my job?” and “Will AI take over the world / become Skynet / etc?”.
Although job concerns are taken more seriously than loss of control.
I’ve thought of a snappy reply to the Skynet thing which is like—Skynet was sci-fi because we don’t give computer programs we don’t understand control of our nukes systems. It wasn’t sci-fi because there could be advanced programs we don’t understand. Well now we’re doing that.
It’s not meant to be deep it’s kind of pointing out, hey, you already agree whatever this tech is, we don’t completely understand it—that’s a much lower bar than “tries to break containment” and so forth—and we are doing many of the sorts of things you should not do with an ill-understood tech.
When I say “surprisingly open” I do not mean “I explain the paperclips thing then we align on p(doom)”. I mean things like: “we could lose control over it”, “the labs developing it don’t even know how it works,” “they’re going way too fast with no regard for safety,” “they’re in an arms race and I don’t know where it’s going.” Or more simply “I am alarmed, do you share in my alarm?” This is “surprising” because my 2025 prior is “it’s a word predictor” and “it’s a bubble.”
I also claim this is exactly where you want the conversation. Most of the heavy lifting is done. People will just demotivate if the conversation is about how everyone will die soon, and I don’t think “your vote has been estimated to reduce the chance of human extinction as much as 4 minutes of technical AI safety research” is going to work.
This would bite us if we had a credible “stop” movement, because a full stop will now cause recession. That would force a split between jobs-harm and extinction-harm. I will point out that political alliance building epistemics is mostly about UFO enthusiasts and astronomers figuring out they both want better telescopes, not aligning on p(aliens).
I’m surprised I can use phrases like “could lose control over” at all. Then I talk about a candidate who’s doing something closer to an AI safety agenda, including “accountability for mass damages”, instead of x-risk irrelevant priorities like banning chatbot medical advice.
I’m not pushing my luck… like I’m not asking people to agree to something like “I’m more worried about human extinction than unemployment”. But I’m discussing AI safety agenda, and getting there by saying I’m worried about “not controlling” AI. I think that’s un-mundane.
Most of the anti-AI sentiment has to do with its use by large companies, governments, employers, etc. All of these are outside of the personal control of anyone you’re talking to, and that’s what “loss of control” over AI means to normies. AI actually taking over the world is such a weird idea that most people wouldn’t even think of that unless they are talking about a movie.
I’m reminded of the UFO enthusiasts who saw that a lot of astronomers are concerned about “the UFO problem”, and concluded that astronomers think UFOs are spaceships. What it actually meant was that astronomers rejected the spaceship idea so strongly that to an astronomer, “the UFO problem” means “the problem that people keep believing in UFOs”.
Anecdotally when I talk to normal people about AI the main questions are “Will AI take my job?” and “Will AI take over the world / become Skynet / etc?”.
Although job concerns are taken more seriously than loss of control.
I’ve thought of a snappy reply to the Skynet thing which is like—Skynet was sci-fi because we don’t give computer programs we don’t understand control of our nukes systems. It wasn’t sci-fi because there could be advanced programs we don’t understand. Well now we’re doing that.
It’s not meant to be deep it’s kind of pointing out, hey, you already agree whatever this tech is, we don’t completely understand it—that’s a much lower bar than “tries to break containment” and so forth—and we are doing many of the sorts of things you should not do with an ill-understood tech.
When I say “surprisingly open” I do not mean “I explain the paperclips thing then we align on p(doom)”. I mean things like: “we could lose control over it”, “the labs developing it don’t even know how it works,” “they’re going way too fast with no regard for safety,” “they’re in an arms race and I don’t know where it’s going.” Or more simply “I am alarmed, do you share in my alarm?” This is “surprising” because my 2025 prior is “it’s a word predictor” and “it’s a bubble.”
I also claim this is exactly where you want the conversation. Most of the heavy lifting is done. People will just demotivate if the conversation is about how everyone will die soon, and I don’t think “your vote has been estimated to reduce the chance of human extinction as much as 4 minutes of technical AI safety research” is going to work.
This would bite us if we had a credible “stop” movement, because a full stop will now cause recession. That would force a split between jobs-harm and extinction-harm. I will point out that political alliance building epistemics is mostly about UFO enthusiasts and astronomers figuring out they both want better telescopes, not aligning on p(aliens).