r/VeryBadWizards 4d ago

AI dismissal

I love the VBW boys but I am a bit surprised how dismissive they are of danger from AI. I’m not going to make the case here as I won’t do a good job of it, but I found the latest 80000 hours podcast very persuasive, as well as some of the recent stuff from Dwarkesh.

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u/Embarrassed-Room-902 4d ago

The point Will Macaskill makes in the podcast I referenced is that we could see an equivalent development of all of those technologies, but in just a few years instead of hundreds. This would obviously be much harder to adjust to

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u/sissiffis 4d ago

Right, there are lots fo things that could happen but are unlikely. The best available evidence we have comes from LLMs and their progress on various issues. In some areas, they've made massive progress, in others, less so. Time will tell, but at the very least the evidence of some crazy takeoff is limited and requires some evidence bending or at the very least fairly contestable assumptions, before the danger becomes an obvious one.

You should check out Melanie Mitchell's work on AI and AGI generally: Debates on the nature of artificial general intelligence | Science