Thank you for writing this and I do not feel attacked at all. You are right that I am in a position of material comfort right now.
I would say that if your main focus is existential risk, then the analogy would be more like someone that is standing on a 2 inch mound of sand in the beach saying that we will be fine. I don’t think there is any “hill” for true existential risk.
If you ware talking about impact on the job market, then I agree that while it’s always been the case that 51 year old tenured professors (or formerly tenured, I just gave up on tenure) are more settled than young students, the level of uncertainty is much higher these days. If that is the risk you are most worried about, I am not sure why you would choose to forgo working in an AI capability lab but I respect that choice.
Thank you for the reply and for your sincerity. I think my response as to “why would you not work at a capabilities lab” is something like “I worry about both the pragmatic and the existential risks quite a lot”, but that is more of a personal thought.
Thank you for writing this and I do not feel attacked at all. You are right that I am in a position of material comfort right now.
I would say that if your main focus is existential risk, then the analogy would be more like someone that is standing on a 2 inch mound of sand in the beach saying that we will be fine. I don’t think there is any “hill” for true existential risk.
If you ware talking about impact on the job market, then I agree that while it’s always been the case that 51 year old tenured professors (or formerly tenured, I just gave up on tenure) are more settled than young students, the level of uncertainty is much higher these days. If that is the risk you are most worried about, I am not sure why you would choose to forgo working in an AI capability lab but I respect that choice.
I did not talk about these other risks in this piece mostly because I felt like this is not what most lesswrong people are worried about, but see also this tweet https://x.com/boazbaraktcs/status/2006768877129302399?s=20
Thank you for the reply and for your sincerity. I think my response as to “why would you not work at a capabilities lab” is something like “I worry about both the pragmatic and the existential risks quite a lot”, but that is more of a personal thought.