I wish this post talked about object level trade offs. It did that somewhat with the reference to the importance of “have a decision theory that makes it easier to be traded with”. However, the opening was extremely strong and was not supported:
I care deeply about the future of humanity—more so than I care about anything else in the world. And I believe that Sam and others at FTX shared that care for the world. Nevertheless, if some hypothetical person had come to me several years ago and asked “Is it worth it to engage in fraud to send billions of dollars to effective causes?”, I would have said unequivocally no.
What level of funding would make fraud worth it?
Edit to expand: I do not believe the answer is infinite. I believe the answer is possibly less than the amount I understand FTX has contributed (assuming they honor their commitments, which they maybe can’t). I think this post gestures at trading off sacred values, in a way that feels like it signals for applause, without actually examining the trade.
Thanks for feedback, I am new to writing in this style and may have erred too much towards deleting sentences while editing. But, if you never cut too much you’re always too verbose, as they say. I in particular appreciate that, when talking about how I am updating, I should make clear where I am updating from.
For instance, regarding human level intelligence, I was also describing relative to “me a year/month ago”. I relistened to the Sam Harris/Yudkowsky podcast yesterday, and they detour for a solid 10 minutes about how “human level” intelligence is a straw target. I think their arguments were persuasive, and that I would have endorsed them a year ago, but that they don’t really apply to GPT. I had pretty much concluded that the difference between a 150 IQ AI and a 350 IQ AI would be a matter of scale. GPT as a simulator/platform seems to me like an existence proof for a not-artificially-handicapped human level AI attractor state. Since I had previous thought the entire idea was a distraction, this is an update towards human level AI.
The impact on AI timelines mostly follows from diversion of investment. I will think on if I have anything additional to add on that front.