Suppose I tell you that next week three things will happen:
A new science paper is published definitively proving that DNN scaling hits heavy diminishing returns at around 2x the current level of compute
Major labs are revealed to have faked agentic demos, and agents are shown to have double-digit rates of lying in terms of misrepresenting the impressiveness of their achievements
Governments around the world (US and China) announce that they will be taking action to halt or slow down dangerous AI research
In general, the point of this exercise is "imagine that the core problems of AI safety are suspended or slowed down significantly for the foreseeable future" (add whatever items to the list you need to satisfy you on this point). In fact, we can add extra items to address other existential risks:
Major action is taken about climate change, many fossil fuel dependent power plants shut down directly with massive new investment in green energy production
Biosecurity initiatives report strong results in developing cancer vaccines and general inoculation methods
Peace accords are signed between all major world powers, implementing staggered deescalation including significant reductions to nuclear stockpiles and arms control agreements
Now, what would you do? Maybe some of us would dance around the room, or sleep for a week, or eat ice cream.
On the first night I'd get drunk. Then I'd live mostly as I do now, spending time with family and playing music. The only change is I'd stop thinking about AI and find other projects instead.
Btw, your post is a better utopia than most utopias ever posted on LW. It really drew me in.
Thank you. I originally wanted to write more after "then what would you do?" but I found that I didn't have more to write. I guess these days I have a pretty constant sense of slowly losing my future (in many senses of the word) and wanted to think about getting a future back.
Suppose I tell you that next week three things will happen:
In general, the point of this exercise is "imagine that the core problems of AI safety are suspended or slowed down significantly for the foreseeable future" (add whatever items to the list you need to satisfy you on this point). In fact, we can add extra items to address other existential risks:
Now, what would you do? Maybe some of us would dance around the room, or sleep for a week, or eat ice cream.
Then what would you do?