[Today is Day 13 of an ongoing 30-day microblogging challenge. It was initiated by Zoe Isabel Senón. You can see who is participating and also join in via this doc.]
I believe that people more broadly should have personal redlines regarding the use of frontier AI systems. There is something incoherent about believing a a company might cause human extinction, but then also being their customer. This is something I still need to think about for myself.
With some reflection and a nudge from a friend who is currently boycotting OpenAI, I decided to cancel my two AI subscriptions with Anthropic and Google. Anthropic asks for feedback as to why you cancel:
I believe advanced AI can cause global catastrophes, and am now boycotting the subscriptions and credits from frontier labs.
As of now, I am still going to be using AI services but only the free tiers. Over the coming days and months, I hope to become more deliberate about how and when I use AI, and who knows, maybe even drop the use of general-purpose AI’s altogether.
Is this ‘rational’? Does this even make a difference to catastrophic risks? I was spending ~£200 per year on each subscription, whereas investments in AI are on the order of £100,000,000,000. Google nor Anthropic are going to change their actions based on my cancellation. But it does feel more consistent with my current beliefs, and sense of what is right or wrong.
If you’re worried about catastrophic risks, I encourage you to consider such actions. However, I suspect my circumstances make the decision easier than for others:
I was not a power-user of AI tools, so the drop in utility from paid version to free version is minimal for me.
I am not working at the moment, or doing high stakes tasks, so any drop in productivity is hardly consequential.
By nature, I am not a maximizer and more of a satisficer.
If you are not ready to cancel or reduce your use of AI now, then I at least encourage you to create a regular reminder (e.g. every six months) to nudge yourself into thinking about this question.
[Today is Day 13 of an ongoing 30-day microblogging challenge. It was initiated by Zoe Isabel Senón. You can see who is participating and also join in via this doc.]
In my post about a conversation with a capabilities research, I ended with this thought:
With some reflection and a nudge from a friend who is currently boycotting OpenAI, I decided to cancel my two AI subscriptions with Anthropic and Google. Anthropic asks for feedback as to why you cancel:
I believe advanced AI can cause global catastrophes, and am now boycotting the subscriptions and credits from frontier labs.
As of now, I am still going to be using AI services but only the free tiers. Over the coming days and months, I hope to become more deliberate about how and when I use AI, and who knows, maybe even drop the use of general-purpose AI’s altogether.
Is this ‘rational’? Does this even make a difference to catastrophic risks? I was spending ~£200 per year on each subscription, whereas investments in AI are on the order of £100,000,000,000. Google nor Anthropic are going to change their actions based on my cancellation. But it does feel more consistent with my current beliefs, and sense of what is right or wrong.
If you’re worried about catastrophic risks, I encourage you to consider such actions. However, I suspect my circumstances make the decision easier than for others:
If you are not ready to cancel or reduce your use of AI now, then I at least encourage you to create a regular reminder (e.g. every six months) to nudge yourself into thinking about this question.