I don’t think “soft/slow takeoff” has a canonical meaning—some people (e.g. Paul) interpret it as not having discontinuities, while others interpret it as capabilities increasing slowly past human intelligence over (say) centuries (e.g. Superintelligence). If I say “slow takeoff” I don’t know which one the listener is going to hear it as. (And if I had to guess, I’d expect they think about the centuries-long version, which is usually not the one I mean.)
In contrast, I think “AI risk” has a much more canonical meaning, in that if I say “AI risk” I expect most listeners to interpret it as accidental risk caused by the AI system optimizing for goals that are not our own.
(Perhaps an important point is that I’m trying to communicate to a much wider audience than the people who read all the Alignment Forum posts and comments. I’d feel more okay about “slow takeoff” if I was just speaking to people who have read many of the posts already arguing about takeoff speeds.)
I don’t think “soft/slow takeoff” has a canonical meaning—some people (e.g. Paul) interpret it as not having discontinuities, while others interpret it as capabilities increasing slowly past human intelligence over (say) centuries (e.g. Superintelligence). If I say “slow takeoff” I don’t know which one the listener is going to hear it as. (And if I had to guess, I’d expect they think about the centuries-long version, which is usually not the one I mean.)
In contrast, I think “AI risk” has a much more canonical meaning, in that if I say “AI risk” I expect most listeners to interpret it as accidental risk caused by the AI system optimizing for goals that are not our own.
(Perhaps an important point is that I’m trying to communicate to a much wider audience than the people who read all the Alignment Forum posts and comments. I’d feel more okay about “slow takeoff” if I was just speaking to people who have read many of the posts already arguing about takeoff speeds.)