It feels to me as if we just had the following discussion:
Selfmaker662: There’s no difference between A, B, and C.
other people: <downvotes Selfmaker662>
Selfmaker662: Huh, why did that happen?
gjm: Well, part of it might be that you said there’s no difference between A, B, and C, but here’s what looks like an important way in which A is different from B and C.
RHollerith: Yeah, but the only important thing is that A, B, and C are all really bad.
You may well be right that all the AI lab CEOs are evil and stupid and their labs should be shut down. But so what? The question was “what might people not have liked about Selfmaker662′s comment?”, and part of my answer was “the claim that there’s no difference between one AI lab CEO and another”, and I think some people might have thought that was wrong even if in fact all AI lab CEOs are evil and stupid. And I also think that AI lab CEOs are not all equally evil and stupid. And also that the world is not made a better place by insisting that every discussion that mentions AI lab CEOs must be punctuated by reminders that they are all evil and stupid.
(And, for what it’s worth: no, I absolutely do not think that we should be “putting our hope in” any AI lab CEO. I’m not sure that’s even a meaningful thing to say; what exactly would I be doing if I “put my hope in”, say, Dario Amodei? and how would it be different from what I would be doing if I “put my hope in” Ilya Sutskever instead?)
It feels to me as if we just had the following discussion:
Selfmaker662: There’s no difference between A, B, and C.
other people: <downvotes Selfmaker662>
Selfmaker662: Huh, why did that happen?
gjm: Well, part of it might be that you said there’s no difference between A, B, and C, but here’s what looks like an important way in which A is different from B and C.
RHollerith: Yeah, but the only important thing is that A, B, and C are all really bad.
You may well be right that all the AI lab CEOs are evil and stupid and their labs should be shut down. But so what? The question was “what might people not have liked about Selfmaker662′s comment?”, and part of my answer was “the claim that there’s no difference between one AI lab CEO and another”, and I think some people might have thought that was wrong even if in fact all AI lab CEOs are evil and stupid. And I also think that AI lab CEOs are not all equally evil and stupid. And also that the world is not made a better place by insisting that every discussion that mentions AI lab CEOs must be punctuated by reminders that they are all evil and stupid.
(And, for what it’s worth: no, I absolutely do not think that we should be “putting our hope in” any AI lab CEO. I’m not sure that’s even a meaningful thing to say; what exactly would I be doing if I “put my hope in”, say, Dario Amodei? and how would it be different from what I would be doing if I “put my hope in” Ilya Sutskever instead?)