It’s like cars: the solution to reducing accidents is to make cars and roads safer, not banning cars nor just deciding that car manufacturers are evil. Solutions can never be perfect, but they put us in a better place on the risk-benefit trade-off curve.
Yann LeCun couldn’t have used a worse example than cars here. It’s not as if the car industry were lobbying and campaigning against the public good in the 1920s by promoting the term “jaywalking” to shift the blame for early pedestrian deaths and injuries away from their new products. Nor is it like there is any indication that the current way we use cars is inadequate, or that those same industries are actively lobbying to oppose public transit, despite that being probably being bad for the future. Perhaps things have changed and car manufacturers and the oil industry have stopped being evil, no longer trying to deceive the public. Or maybe “jaywalking” is still a frequently used term, pedestrian deaths are increasing every year in the US and lobbying is doing so well that the US president is trying to convince everyone that global warming is a hoax.
At this point I don’t think that focusing on what to do about car accidents and climate change is as relevant as the imminent risk of AI doom. I’m just pointing out that Yann LeCun’s example is bad for his argument.
Yann LeCun couldn’t have used a worse example than cars here.
It’s not as if the car industry were lobbying and campaigning against the public good in the 1920s by promoting the term “jaywalking” to shift the blame for early pedestrian deaths and injuries away from their new products.
Nor is it like there is any indication that the current way we use cars is inadequate, or that those same industries are actively lobbying to oppose public transit, despite that being probably being bad for the future.
Perhaps things have changed and car manufacturers and the oil industry have stopped being evil, no longer trying to deceive the public. Or maybe “jaywalking” is still a frequently used term, pedestrian deaths are increasing every year in the US and lobbying is doing so well that the US president is trying to convince everyone that global warming is a hoax.
At this point I don’t think that focusing on what to do about car accidents and climate change is as relevant as the imminent risk of AI doom. I’m just pointing out that Yann LeCun’s example is bad for his argument.