I already emailed you about this but it might be useful to share here too for feedback.
I think it would be bad to use a technology if:
Using the technology itself is an existential risk (i.e. if ChatGPT might kill all humans if I ask the wrong question)
Using it will increase the amount of resources into making it powerful enough for situation (1) to apply
I don’t think (1) is currently the case with ChatGPT, and I think people like Eliezer agree.
I think using ChatGPT, even the paid version, won’t increase the resources going into AI capabilities because the big AI companies aren’t funding constrained. If OpenAI needed another billion dollars, they’d just sell a billion dollars worth of stock. My $20 per month probably increases the price people would pay for that stock, but that just reduces the dilution existing shareholders face and has no real effect on their ability to get funding if they need it.
I might feel differently if my usage increased other people’s usage of ChatGPT (although I also think hype is so high it would be very difficult to meaningfully increase it), if I was part of a big enough coalition that our boycott was meaningful and noticable, or if I was using it at a scale where the money paid to OpenAI was significant (I would consider free-riding with open source models to avoid funding capabilities).
I already emailed you about this but it might be useful to share here too for feedback.
I think it would be bad to use a technology if:
Using the technology itself is an existential risk (i.e. if ChatGPT might kill all humans if I ask the wrong question)
Using it will increase the amount of resources into making it powerful enough for situation (1) to apply
I don’t think (1) is currently the case with ChatGPT, and I think people like Eliezer agree.
I think using ChatGPT, even the paid version, won’t increase the resources going into AI capabilities because the big AI companies aren’t funding constrained. If OpenAI needed another billion dollars, they’d just sell a billion dollars worth of stock. My $20 per month probably increases the price people would pay for that stock, but that just reduces the dilution existing shareholders face and has no real effect on their ability to get funding if they need it.
I might feel differently if my usage increased other people’s usage of ChatGPT (although I also think hype is so high it would be very difficult to meaningfully increase it), if I was part of a big enough coalition that our boycott was meaningful and noticable, or if I was using it at a scale where the money paid to OpenAI was significant (I would consider free-riding with open source models to avoid funding capabilities).