This is a special post for quick takes by gustaf. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
In 2015 Sam Altman wrote to Elon Musk:
Been thinking a lot about whether it's possible to stop humanity from developing AI. I think the answer is almost definitely not. If it's going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first.
This seems to me like another example of what Vitalik calls Inevitibilism in his essay against Galaxy Brain Arguments.
Here are some things I did after reading If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies:
- tell my friends and family about the book
- write a review on Amazon & Goodreads
- review scam copies on Amazon with 1 star
- Searching for IABED on amazon.com, you will find that after the real book, several LLM written scam copies show up.
- the same is true for amazon.co.uk, .de, ... (these are distinct as far as reviews go)
- I looked at the sample text and if it made no sense and was LLM written (it always was), wrote a 1 star review (only on amazon.de)
- I only rated on amazon.de, because my Amazon account is only eligible for that. You could do it for the other Amazon sites.
- Usually my reviews are display on the next day
- (MIRI is aware but "it seems like there isn't that much we can do about it, unfortunately.")
- (I also tried reporting them; but I am not sure they are breaking any rules.)
- request the book in libraries
- I found a list of German public libraries, where one can easily request them to buy a book and went through that. You could do this for libraries in your region.
- I did 15 requests. 4 libraries bought it. 2 said they won't buy it.
I'd attend a march, if 1000 people also pledged to march in Germany.
I might contact my representatives (How to email your politician).
2Overview of Eliezer Yudkowsky's writing:
- on LessWrong starting with The Sequences / Rationality A-Z (book)
- Harry Potter and the Methods Of Rationality (book)
- Planecrash / Project Lawful (long fictional story)
- on Arbital (AI Alignment)
- on Twitter/X (mostly retweeting)
- on Facebook (mostly retweeting)
- on Medium (2 posts)
- on Tumblr (fiction / on writing)
- e.g. Masculine Mongoose (short story)
- on fanfiction.net (3 stories)
- on yudkowsky.net (personal/fiction)
- on Reddit (fiction / on writing)