Curated. This is a clearly written, succinct version of both arguments and counterarguments, which doesn’t even seem terribly lossy to me (though I’ve read IABIED in full but not the counterarguments). I find it helpful for loading it all up into my mental context at once, and helpful for directing my own thinking for further investigation. All that to say, I think this post does the world a good service. And like much distillation work, deserves more appreciation than is the default.
I’m pretty on the doomy side and find the counterarguments not persuasive, but it is interesting to realize that often that’s because of yet further arguments/counter-counter arguments that I’m aware of but aren’t in IABIED itself, if I’m remembering correctly, or at least not at the length or depth I think is warranted for how intuitively reasonable those counterarguments seem, e.g. that models are trained on lots of data about human values and so hitting that target wouldn’t so surprising after all, and how current models seem pretty aligned. I think answering them requires something of a 201 of IABIED. (But that’s why we have the Four Layers of Intellectual Conversation!)
However, I am saddened that this review is missing the critiques that I’m most interested in hearing, e.g. those from the likes of Buck and Ryan, e.g. I enjoyed most of IABIED. The counterargument authors like Matthew Barnett, Quintin, Nora, etc are people with whom I have a lot of divergences of views, so their arguments have a harder time for being compelling. Buck and Ryan are much, much closer (and I respect their thinking) such that I’d like any list to capture their arguments (or at least link to them). Notwithstanding, I like this piece. Kudos!
Curated. This is a clearly written, succinct version of both arguments and counterarguments, which doesn’t even seem terribly lossy to me (though I’ve read IABIED in full but not the counterarguments). I find it helpful for loading it all up into my mental context at once, and helpful for directing my own thinking for further investigation. All that to say, I think this post does the world a good service. And like much distillation work, deserves more appreciation than is the default.
I’m pretty on the doomy side and find the counterarguments not persuasive, but it is interesting to realize that often that’s because of yet further arguments/counter-counter arguments that I’m aware of but aren’t in IABIED itself, if I’m remembering correctly, or at least not at the length or depth I think is warranted for how intuitively reasonable those counterarguments seem, e.g. that models are trained on lots of data about human values and so hitting that target wouldn’t so surprising after all, and how current models seem pretty aligned. I think answering them requires something of a 201 of IABIED. (But that’s why we have the Four Layers of Intellectual Conversation!)
However, I am saddened that this review is missing the critiques that I’m most interested in hearing, e.g. those from the likes of Buck and Ryan, e.g. I enjoyed most of IABIED. The counterargument authors like Matthew Barnett, Quintin, Nora, etc are people with whom I have a lot of divergences of views, so their arguments have a harder time for being compelling. Buck and Ryan are much, much closer (and I respect their thinking) such that I’d like any list to capture their arguments (or at least link to them). Notwithstanding, I like this piece. Kudos!