That’s a good question! One big difference is that the most stringent measures against covid, eg lockdowns, had annoying consequences for the general population, thus producing a backlash if not seen basically as the only option (my impression is that past the very first lockdown, where the uncertainty scared people enough, they became broadly unpopular)
My 2 comments:
1) Pausing AI research would cause minimal disturbance on the general population. It would be one of those abstract political questions some people would overstate the benefits/harm of, without big concrete observable effects for most (actually ~all) people. (this doesn’t contradict your comment which made the point that there might be counter-examples to the statement “Doing something once is in general extremely helpful for doing it later times”)
2) I’m not convinced we are at all “less prepared” than in 2020. It’s quite unlikely the next serious pandemic is very similar to covid in terms of infectiousness profile and severity profile, so people would adapt differently depending on these parameters, and not ignore it because “covid was fine” (eg imagine if it’s more dangerous to children this time). At least I would expect the public to take it more seriously in the early phase, unlike covid which was downplayed until too late to ignore. We also still have the memories of how to adapt our life to different restrictions, and that we can adapt fast. The rate of people being “science skeptical” seems to be roughly the same as before 2020, from the empirical research I saw (epistemic confidence: low)
That’s a good question! One big difference is that the most stringent measures against covid, eg lockdowns, had annoying consequences for the general population, thus producing a backlash if not seen basically as the only option (my impression is that past the very first lockdown, where the uncertainty scared people enough, they became broadly unpopular)
My 2 comments:
1) Pausing AI research would cause minimal disturbance on the general population. It would be one of those abstract political questions some people would overstate the benefits/harm of, without big concrete observable effects for most (actually ~all) people. (this doesn’t contradict your comment which made the point that there might be counter-examples to the statement “Doing something once is in general extremely helpful for doing it later times”)
2) I’m not convinced we are at all “less prepared” than in 2020. It’s quite unlikely the next serious pandemic is very similar to covid in terms of infectiousness profile and severity profile, so people would adapt differently depending on these parameters, and not ignore it because “covid was fine” (eg imagine if it’s more dangerous to children this time). At least I would expect the public to take it more seriously in the early phase, unlike covid which was downplayed until too late to ignore. We also still have the memories of how to adapt our life to different restrictions, and that we can adapt fast. The rate of people being “science skeptical” seems to be roughly the same as before 2020, from the empirical research I saw (epistemic confidence: low)