Anthropic Fellow. I tweet at https://twitter.com/AskYatharth
yatharth
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Every time someone writes “superintelligent AI,” I think they should consider writing “superpowerful AI.”
I can imagine slightly superintelligent AI that is not sci-fi, take over the world, sysop scenario, nation-state bargaining table powerful. Even if it’s superintelligent in all the charismatic and persuasive ways, not just nerdy and mathematical.
What people usually mean is AI capable of achieving significant control over Earth. Something to be reckoned with, that can gradually disempower you, lock in the light cone, etc.
Knock-your-balls-off superintelligent AI would become superpowerful AI, but you can just say superpowerful AI and save yourself the extra assertion needed and adjectives!
(Plus, most people think of intelligence in the normal, non-LessWrong sense anyway, where intelligence doesn’t immediately imply power. No need to swim against the ordinary course of language.)
Hm, I see—last question asked July 7 of this year! The reason makes sense:
Like a lot of “what’s allowed on LW” questions, the answer is a bit subtle.
Yeah, it’s interesting, “is X allowed?” is a question that newbies to a community often ask, and the answer is always sorta “uh, sorta? no one is the hall monitor here. but you may wanna reply a bunch first and pick up on what the vibe is and you will have a more instinctive understanding that makes the question as posed in its abstraction seem wrong to you too.”
Edit: oh, wait! you’ve been around for awhile, and already made some posts. can you ask more specifically about what information you’re seeking?
I don’t feel like I’ve really been around, or made a proper meaty, non-meta post (although I’m drafting one right now!). My original question was something like..
Is this a thing? Was there ever an era where people did this?
Have you wanted to do this? What did you do instead?
The answer to the first question is “yes! there was a questions feature (now deprecated).”
A good answer to the second question, I’m surmising, is something like what you say:
Notice question arise.
Spend up to 20 minutes with Fable/Sol.
Intellectually digest it, noticing what feels answered and what doesn’t, and how you’d explain it to someone else.
Put THAT in a post maybe!This is like StackOverflow’s post-Google, pre-LLM ask of question askers to have done their homework by Googling their questions with a few obvious keywords.
Oh, interesting, that is exactly what I was looking for, and I think I would be very interested in them. But yes, seems most recent activity is from 4 years ago.
Hmm, other reasons like what? Human-level intelligence, plus an larger initial stockpile of weapons/economy/territory?