I feel very meh about “wake up the world”, firstly because AI capabilities companies are going to do it for us, and secondly because whether it’s good or bad depends a lot on the quality of what we funnel the world towards
These two points seem contradictory. AI capabilities companies aren’t going to do the good thing for us. (Or maybe you think they are? But I’m a bit surprised if you think that.)
Yeah, good point. My intended synthesis here is that AI companies “wake up the world” in the sense of getting everyone to pay attention, but struggle to then command the resulting narratives. So (as in the wake of ChatGPT) there’s a lot of room for good narratives after capabilities breakthroughs. But our narratives are still pretty weak. So work that’s intended to “wake up the world” should mostly be focusing on figuring out what you’d say if you had the world’s attention rather than getting the world’s attention.
These two points seem contradictory. AI capabilities companies aren’t going to do the good thing for us. (Or maybe you think they are? But I’m a bit surprised if you think that.)
Yeah, good point. My intended synthesis here is that AI companies “wake up the world” in the sense of getting everyone to pay attention, but struggle to then command the resulting narratives. So (as in the wake of ChatGPT) there’s a lot of room for good narratives after capabilities breakthroughs. But our narratives are still pretty weak. So work that’s intended to “wake up the world” should mostly be focusing on figuring out what you’d say if you had the world’s attention rather than getting the world’s attention.