I feel the disagreement isn’t purely about longtermism. Some people believe in investing billions of dollars in military projects, fusion research, space projects, which might take 50 years to complete. Lots of people argue that AGI is coming in less than 50 years, heck even less than 5 years.
I think people lack concern in AGI not just because it’s too far in the future, but because it’s psychologically too weird, sci-fi, and unprecedented to care a lot about smarter than human machines.
I do agree it’s absurd when people refuse to care at all about the far future of humanity over billions of years, and even look at you funnily when you talk about it. Why do they have to be so “all or nothing” about it, as if we must either care about it completely to the point of neglecting all present day causes, or ignore it completely like an awkward joke?
I wonder what can even be done about the far future over billions of years. I don’t think that even if AI progress is fully shut down forever, mankind would have anything to do after the next 10 thousand years. Therefore, mankind’s task is to ensure that nobody screws up the current 10 thousand or far less years. In the case of AI this is reduced to ensuring that no one creates an ASI not aligned to the broadest coalition of humans, and to solving current problems.
I agree that going into the details of the far future and trying to find specific solutions to specific problems might be ineffective, e.g. a caveman living 100,000 years ago can’t do much help us solve global warming.
But I think imagining the far future over billions of years once in a while, and treating it as a serious topic (e.g. listening to people talk about it without cringing), helps us remember that it actually exists and is something at stake.
I feel the disagreement isn’t purely about longtermism. Some people believe in investing billions of dollars in military projects, fusion research, space projects, which might take 50 years to complete. Lots of people argue that AGI is coming in less than 50 years, heck even less than 5 years.
I think people lack concern in AGI not just because it’s too far in the future, but because it’s psychologically too weird, sci-fi, and unprecedented to care a lot about smarter than human machines.
I do agree it’s absurd when people refuse to care at all about the far future of humanity over billions of years, and even look at you funnily when you talk about it. Why do they have to be so “all or nothing” about it, as if we must either care about it completely to the point of neglecting all present day causes, or ignore it completely like an awkward joke?
I wonder what can even be done about the far future over billions of years. I don’t think that even if AI progress is fully shut down forever, mankind would have anything to do after the next 10 thousand years. Therefore, mankind’s task is to ensure that nobody screws up the current 10 thousand or far less years. In the case of AI this is reduced to ensuring that no one creates an ASI not aligned to the broadest coalition of humans, and to solving current problems.
I agree that going into the details of the far future and trying to find specific solutions to specific problems might be ineffective, e.g. a caveman living 100,000 years ago can’t do much help us solve global warming.
But I think imagining the far future over billions of years once in a while, and treating it as a serious topic (e.g. listening to people talk about it without cringing), helps us remember that it actually exists and is something at stake.