I’d bet that I’m still on the side where I can safely navigate and pick up the utility, and I median-expect to be for the next couple months ish.
With respect, I suggest to you that this sort of thinking is a failure of security mindset. (However, I am content to leave the matter un-argued at this time.)
… if you’re going to be that paranoid about LLM interference (as is very reasonable to do), it makes sense to try and eliminate second order effects and never talk to people who talk to LLMs, for they too might be meaningfully harmful e.g. be under the influence of particularly powerful LLM-generated memes.
Yes… this is true in a personal-protection sense, I agree. And I do already try to stay away from people who talk to LLMs a lot, or who don’t seem to be showing any caution about it, or who don’t take concerns like this seriously, etc. (I have never needed any special reason to avoid Twitter, but if one does—well, here’s yet another reason for the list.)
However, taking a pure personal-protection stance on this matter does not seem to me to be sensible even from a selfish perspective. It seems to me that there is no choice but to try to convince others, insofar as it is possible to do this in accordance with my principles. In other words, if I take on some second-order effect risk, but in exchange I get some chance of several other people considering what I say and deciding to do as I am doing, then this seems to me to be a positive trade-off—especially since, if one takes the danger seriously, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that choosing to say nothing results in a bad end, regardless of how paranoid one has been.
I think we’re mostly on the same page that there are things worth forgoing the “pure personal-protection” strategy for, we’re just on different pages about what those things are. We agree that “convince people to be much more cautious about LLM interactions” is in that category. I just also put “make my external brain more powerful” in that category, since it seems to have positive expected utility for now and lets me do more AI safety research in line with what pre-LLM me would likely endorse upon reflection. I am indeed trying to be very cautious about this process, trying to be corrigible to my past self, to implement all of the mitigations I listed plus all the ones I don’t have words for yet. It would be a failure of security mindset to fail to notice these things and to see that they are important to deal with. However, it is a bet that I am making that the extra optimization power is worth it for now. I may lose that bet, and then that will be bad.
With respect, I suggest to you that this sort of thinking is a failure of security mindset. (However, I am content to leave the matter un-argued at this time.)
Yes… this is true in a personal-protection sense, I agree. And I do already try to stay away from people who talk to LLMs a lot, or who don’t seem to be showing any caution about it, or who don’t take concerns like this seriously, etc. (I have never needed any special reason to avoid Twitter, but if one does—well, here’s yet another reason for the list.)
However, taking a pure personal-protection stance on this matter does not seem to me to be sensible even from a selfish perspective. It seems to me that there is no choice but to try to convince others, insofar as it is possible to do this in accordance with my principles. In other words, if I take on some second-order effect risk, but in exchange I get some chance of several other people considering what I say and deciding to do as I am doing, then this seems to me to be a positive trade-off—especially since, if one takes the danger seriously, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that choosing to say nothing results in a bad end, regardless of how paranoid one has been.
I think we’re mostly on the same page that there are things worth forgoing the “pure personal-protection” strategy for, we’re just on different pages about what those things are. We agree that “convince people to be much more cautious about LLM interactions” is in that category. I just also put “make my external brain more powerful” in that category, since it seems to have positive expected utility for now and lets me do more AI safety research in line with what pre-LLM me would likely endorse upon reflection. I am indeed trying to be very cautious about this process, trying to be corrigible to my past self, to implement all of the mitigations I listed plus all the ones I don’t have words for yet. It would be a failure of security mindset to fail to notice these things and to see that they are important to deal with. However, it is a bet that I am making that the extra optimization power is worth it for now. I may lose that bet, and then that will be bad.