If the Author believes what they’ve written then they clearly think that it would be more dangerous to ignore this than to be wrong about it, so I can’t really argue that they shouldn’t be person number 1. It’s a comfortable moral position you can force yourself into though. “If I’m wrong, at least we avoided total annihilation, so in a way I still feel good about myself”.
I see this particular kind of prediction as a kind of ethical posturing and can’t in good conscience let people make them without some kind of accountability. People have been paid millions to work on predictions similar to these. If they are wrong, they should be held accountable in proportion to whatever cost they have have incurred on society, big or small, financial or behavioural.
If wrong, I don’t want anyone brushing these predictions off as silly mistakes, simple errors in models, or rationalising them away. “That’s not actually what they meant by AGI”, or “It was better to be wrong than say nothing, please keep taking me seriously”. Sometimes mistakes are made because of huge fundamental errors in understanding across the entire subject and we do need a record of that for reasons more important than fun and games, so definitely be the first kind of person but, you know, people are watching is all.
I have saved this post on the internet archive[1].
If in 5-15 years, the prediction does not come true, i would like it to be saved as evidence of one of the many serious claims that world-ending AI will be with us in very short timelines. I think the author has given more than enough detail on what they mean by AGI, and has given more than enough detail on what it might look like, so it should be obvious whether or not the prediction comes true. In other words, no rationalising past this or taking it back. If this is what the author truly believes, they should have a permanent record of their abilities to make predictions.
I encourage everyone to save posts similar to this one in the internet archive. The AI community, if there is one, is quite divided on issues like these, and even among groups that are in broad agreement there are disagreements on details. It will be very useful to have a public archive of who made what claims so we know who to avoid and who to take seriously.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221020151610/https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4urTDkBbtNuLivJx/why-i-think-strong-general-ai-is-coming-soon