My experience is extremely different from yours. I think almost all the non-[rat/EA] people in my life whose positions on this I know consider it plausible that an AI substantially smarter than any human will be created this century.[1] Thinking of the set of non-[rat/EA] friends/[close-ish acquaintances] I haven’t discussed this topic with yet, my guess is that more than half of them already think this and almost all of them would think this after a 2 hour conversation with me. It’s probably important that my distribution skews very high iq (maybe importantly both quant and verbal)[2] and high openness.[3]
like, these are mostly people I know from the international olympiad circuit, math and physics majors from my MIT undergrad, and classmates from the best high school in Estonia
Some of them deferring to me partly on the question is probably also doing some work tbh, but I think this isn’t a big enough effect to change the broad strokes conditional on getting them to consider the hypothesis at all.
My experience is extremely different from yours. I think almost all the non-[rat/EA] people in my life whose positions on this I know consider it plausible that an AI substantially smarter than any human will be created this century. [1] Thinking of the set of non-[rat/EA] friends/[close-ish acquaintances] I haven’t discussed this topic with yet, my guess is that more than half of them already think this and almost all of them would think this after a 2 hour conversation with me. It’s probably important that my distribution skews very high iq (maybe importantly both quant and verbal) [2] and high openness. [3]
this includes e.g. the 4 family members I’ve discussed this topic with
like, these are mostly people I know from the international olympiad circuit, math and physics majors from my MIT undergrad, and classmates from the best high school in Estonia
Some of them deferring to me partly on the question is probably also doing some work tbh, but I think this isn’t a big enough effect to change the broad strokes conditional on getting them to consider the hypothesis at all.