I think the debate really does need to center on specific pivotal outcomes, rather than how the outcomes come about. The sets of pivotal outcomes attainable by pivotal acts v.s. by pivotal processes seem rather different.
I suspect your key crux with pivotal-act advocates is whether there actually exist any pivotal outcomes that are plausibly attainable by pivotal processes. Any advantages that more distributed pivotal transitions have in the abstract are moot if there are no good concrete instantiations.
For example, in the stereotypical pivotal act, the pivotal outcome is that no (other) actors possess the hardware to build an AGI. It’s clear how this world state is safe from AGI, and how a (AGI-level) pivotal act could in principle achieve it. It’s not clear to me that a plausible pivotal process could achieve it. (Likewise, for your placeholder AI immune system example, it’s not clear to me either that this is practically achievable or that it would be pivotal.)
This crux is probably downstream of other disagreements about how much distributed means (governance, persuasion, regulation, ?) can accomplish, and what changes to the world suffice for safety. I these would be more productive to debate in the context of a specific non-placeholder proposal for a pivotal process.
It’s certainly fair to argue that there are downsides to pivotal acts, and that we should prefer a pivotal process if possible, but IMO the hard part is establishing that possibility. I’m not 100% confident that a pivotal transition needs to look like a surprise unilateral act, but I don’t know of any similarly concrete alternative proposals for how we end up in a safe world state.
There’s also two really important cruxes: is it expedient (more likely result in alignment) to move from a multi polar to unipolar world, and is a unipolar world actually a good thing? (Most people would oppose a unipolar world, especially if they perceive it as a hegemony of US techbros and their electronic pet.)
I think the debate really does need to center on specific pivotal outcomes, rather than how the outcomes come about. The sets of pivotal outcomes attainable by pivotal acts v.s. by pivotal processes seem rather different.
I suspect your key crux with pivotal-act advocates is whether there actually exist any pivotal outcomes that are plausibly attainable by pivotal processes. Any advantages that more distributed pivotal transitions have in the abstract are moot if there are no good concrete instantiations.
For example, in the stereotypical pivotal act, the pivotal outcome is that no (other) actors possess the hardware to build an AGI. It’s clear how this world state is safe from AGI, and how a (AGI-level) pivotal act could in principle achieve it. It’s not clear to me that a plausible pivotal process could achieve it. (Likewise, for your placeholder AI immune system example, it’s not clear to me either that this is practically achievable or that it would be pivotal.)
This crux is probably downstream of other disagreements about how much distributed means (governance, persuasion, regulation, ?) can accomplish, and what changes to the world suffice for safety. I these would be more productive to debate in the context of a specific non-placeholder proposal for a pivotal process.
It’s certainly fair to argue that there are downsides to pivotal acts, and that we should prefer a pivotal process if possible, but IMO the hard part is establishing that possibility. I’m not 100% confident that a pivotal transition needs to look like a surprise unilateral act, but I don’t know of any similarly concrete alternative proposals for how we end up in a safe world state.
There’s also two really important cruxes: is it expedient (more likely result in alignment) to move from a multi polar to unipolar world, and is a unipolar world actually a good thing? (Most people would oppose a unipolar world, especially if they perceive it as a hegemony of US techbros and their electronic pet.)