I for one am not being hypocritical here. Analogy: Suppose it came to light that the US was working on super-bioweapons with a 100% fatality rate, long incubation period, vaccine-resistant, etc. and that they ignored the combined calls from most of the rest of the world to get them to stop. They say they are doing it safely and that it’ll only be used against terrorists (they say they’ve ‘aligned’ the virus to only kill terrorists or something like that, but many prominent bio experts say their techniques are far from adequate to ensure this and some say they are being pretty delusional to think their techniques even had a chance of achieving this). Wouldn’t you agree that other countries would be well within their rights to attack the relevant bioweapon facilities, after diplomacy failed?
I am not an American (so excuse me for my bad English!), so my opinion about the admissibility of attack on the US data centers is not so important. This is not my country.
But reading about the bombing of Russian data centers as an example was unpleasant. It sounds like a Western bias for me. And not only for me.
If the text is aimed at readers not only from the First World countries, well, perhaps the authors should do such a clarification as you did! Then it will not look like political hypocrisy. Or not write about air strikes at all, because people are distracted for discussing this.
Thank you for pointing this perspective out. Although Eliezer is from the west, I assure you he cares nothing for that sort of politics. The whole point is that the ban would have to be universally supported, with a tight alliance between US, China, Russia, and ideally every other country in the world. No one wants to do any airstrikes and, you’re right, they are distracting from the real conversation.
Thanks. I agree it was a mistake for Yudkowsky to mention that bit, for the reason you mention. Alternatively he should have clarified that he wasn’t being a hypocrite and that he’d say the same thing if it was US datacenters going rogue and threatening the world.
I think your opinion matters morally and epistemically regardless of your nationality. I agree that your opinion is less likely to influence the US government if you aren’t living in the US. Sorry about that.
Umm arguably the USA did exactly this when they developed devices that exploit fusion and then miniaturized them and loaded them into bombers, silos, and submarines.
They never made enough nukes to kill everyone on the planet but that bioweapon probably wouldn’t either. Bioweapon is more counterable, some groups would survive so long as they isolated long enough.
So… are you saying that if the nations of the world had gotten together to agree to ban nukes in 1950 or so, and the ban seemed to be generally working except that the USA said no and continued to develop nukes, the other nations of the world would have been justified in attacking said nuclear facilities?
Justified? Yes. Would the USA have caved in response? Of course not, it has nukes and they don’t. (Assuming it first gets everything in place for rapid exploitation of the nukes, it can use them danger close to vaporize invasions then bomb every country attackings most strategic assets. )
AGI has similar military benefits. Better attack fast or the country with it will rapidly become more powerful and you will be helpless to threaten anything in return, having not invested in AGI infrastructure.
So in this scenario each party has to have massive training facilities, smaller secret test runs, and warehouses full of robots so they can rapidly act if they think the other party is defecting. So everyone is a slight pressure on a button away from developing and using AGI.
I for one am not being hypocritical here. Analogy: Suppose it came to light that the US was working on super-bioweapons with a 100% fatality rate, long incubation period, vaccine-resistant, etc. and that they ignored the combined calls from most of the rest of the world to get them to stop. They say they are doing it safely and that it’ll only be used against terrorists (they say they’ve ‘aligned’ the virus to only kill terrorists or something like that, but many prominent bio experts say their techniques are far from adequate to ensure this and some say they are being pretty delusional to think their techniques even had a chance of achieving this). Wouldn’t you agree that other countries would be well within their rights to attack the relevant bioweapon facilities, after diplomacy failed?
I’m not an American, so my consent doesn’t mean much :)
? Can you elaborate, I’m not sure what you are saying.
I am not an American (so excuse me for my bad English!), so my opinion about the admissibility of attack on the US data centers is not so important. This is not my country.
But reading about the bombing of Russian data centers as an example was unpleasant. It sounds like a Western bias for me. And not only for me.
‘What on Earth was the point of choosing this as an example? To rouse the political emotions of the readers and distract them from the main question?’.
If the text is aimed at readers not only from the First World countries, well, perhaps the authors should do such a clarification as you did! Then it will not look like political hypocrisy. Or not write about air strikes at all, because people are distracted for discussing this.
I’m Russian and I think, when I will translate this, I will change “Russian” to “[other country’s]”. Will feel safer that way.
BTW, Done
Thank you for pointing this perspective out. Although Eliezer is from the west, I assure you he cares nothing for that sort of politics. The whole point is that the ban would have to be universally supported, with a tight alliance between US, China, Russia, and ideally every other country in the world. No one wants to do any airstrikes and, you’re right, they are distracting from the real conversation.
Thanks. I agree it was a mistake for Yudkowsky to mention that bit, for the reason you mention. Alternatively he should have clarified that he wasn’t being a hypocrite and that he’d say the same thing if it was US datacenters going rogue and threatening the world.
I think your opinion matters morally and epistemically regardless of your nationality. I agree that your opinion is less likely to influence the US government if you aren’t living in the US. Sorry about that.
Thanks for your answer, this is important to me.
Umm arguably the USA did exactly this when they developed devices that exploit fusion and then miniaturized them and loaded them into bombers, silos, and submarines.
They never made enough nukes to kill everyone on the planet but that bioweapon probably wouldn’t either. Bioweapon is more counterable, some groups would survive so long as they isolated long enough.
So… are you saying that if the nations of the world had gotten together to agree to ban nukes in 1950 or so, and the ban seemed to be generally working except that the USA said no and continued to develop nukes, the other nations of the world would have been justified in attacking said nuclear facilities?
Justified? Yes. Would the USA have caved in response? Of course not, it has nukes and they don’t. (Assuming it first gets everything in place for rapid exploitation of the nukes, it can use them danger close to vaporize invasions then bomb every country attackings most strategic assets. )
AGI has similar military benefits. Better attack fast or the country with it will rapidly become more powerful and you will be helpless to threaten anything in return, having not invested in AGI infrastructure.
So in this scenario each party has to have massive training facilities, smaller secret test runs, and warehouses full of robots so they can rapidly act if they think the other party is defecting. So everyone is a slight pressure on a button away from developing and using AGI.