My guess is that they’re doing the motte-and-bailey of “make it seem to people who haven’t read the book that it says that the ASI extinction is inevitable, that the book is just spreading doom and gloom”, from which, if challenged, they could retreat to “no, I meant doom isn’t inevitable even if we do build ASI using the current methods”.
Like, if someone means the latter (and has also read the book and knows that it goes to great lengths to clarify that we can avoid extinction), would they really phrase it as “doom is inevitable”, as opposed to e. g. “safe ASI is impossible”?
Or maybe they haven’t put that much thought into it and are just sloppy with language.
My guess is that they’re doing the motte-and-bailey of “make it seem to people who haven’t read the book that it says that the ASI extinction is inevitable, that the book is just spreading doom and gloom”, from which, if challenged, they could retreat to “no, I meant doom isn’t inevitable even if we do build ASI using the current methods”.
Like, if someone means the latter (and has also read the book and knows that it goes to great lengths to clarify that we can avoid extinction), would they really phrase it as “doom is inevitable”, as opposed to e. g. “safe ASI is impossible”?
Or maybe they haven’t put that much thought into it and are just sloppy with language.
Eliezer did write Death with Dignity which seems to assert that doom is inevitable, so the book not making that case, is a meaningful step.