I’ll say a little bit about the single one [x-risk] on this list that I worry about the most, which is (...) Unfriendly Artificial Intelligence. (...) One thing I think is clear: That we really don’t know [about the impact of foom-able AI]. (...) My feeling is if we really don’t know, probably we should put at least a little bit of thought into thinking about it (...) with a few awsome exceptions [points out the FHI] there is way too little attention given to this.
A very nice touch a bit later on when he says he worries about this also as a father, which reinforces the point that x-risk isn’t just something academic, but would have an actual, real impact to his actual family’s actual well-being. It’s easy to banish x-risk discussions to some academic sphere of armchair-theorycrafting, and not realize that if e.g. the planet explodes, that encompasses your house as well. Even your comfy chair!
Visions of it swam sickeningly through his nauseated mind. There was no way his imagination could feel the impact of the whole Earth having gone, it was too big. He prodded his feelings by thinking that his parents and his sister had gone. No reaction. He thought of all the people he had been close to. No reaction. Then he thought of a complete stranger he had been standing behind in the queue at the supermarket before and felt a sudden stab—the supermarket was gone, everything in it was gone. Nelson’s Column had gone! Nelson’s Column had gone and there would be no outcry, because there was no one left to make an outcry. From now on Nelson’s Column only existed in his mind. England only existed in his mind—his mind, stuck here in this dank smelly steel-lined spaceship. A wave of claustrophobia closed in on him.
England no longer existed. He’d got that—somehow he’d got it. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn’t grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He’d never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, had sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonalds, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald’s hamburger.
At 30:20 in the talk:
A very nice touch a bit later on when he says he worries about this also as a father, which reinforces the point that x-risk isn’t just something academic, but would have an actual, real impact to his actual family’s actual well-being. It’s easy to banish x-risk discussions to some academic sphere of armchair-theorycrafting, and not realize that if e.g. the planet explodes, that encompasses your house as well. Even your comfy chair!
It’s from the ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. There, I saved you a google.