davekasten's Shortform

davekasten

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A random observation from a think tank event last night in DC -- the average person in those rooms is convinced there's a problem, but that it's the near-term harms, the AI ethics stuff, etc. The highest-status and highest-rank people in those rooms seem to be much more concerned about catastrophic harms.

This is a very weird set of selection effects. I'm not sure what to make of it, honestly.

1thinking2y

Does "highest status" here mean highest expertise in a domain generally agreed by people in that domain, and/or education level, and/or privileged schools, and/or from more economically powerful countries etc? It is also good to note that sometimes the "status" is dynamic, and may or may not imply anything causal with their decision making or choice on priorities. One scenario is "higher status" might correlates with better resources to achieve those statuses, and a possibility is as a result they haven't experienced or they are not subject to many near-term harms. In other words, it is not really about the difference between "average" and "high status"'s people's intelligence, but more about what kind of world they are exposed to. I do think it is good to hear all different perspectives to stay curious/open-minded. edit: I just saw Dragon nicely listed two potential reasons, with scenario 2 mentioning something similar with my comment here. But something slightly specific in my thinking, is that these choices made by "average" and "high status" people may or may not be conscious, but rather from the experience from their lives and the world they are exposed to.

Does "highest status" here mean highest expertise in a domain generally agreed by people in that domain, and/or education level, and/or privileged schools, and/or from more economically powerful countries etc?

I mean, functionally all of those things. (Well, minus the country dynamic. Everyone at this event I talked to was US, UK, or Canadian, which is all sorta one team for purposes of status dynamics at that event)

1davekasten2y

I think this is plausibly describing some folks! But I also think there's a separate piece -- I observe, with pretty high odds that it isn't just an act, that at least some people are trying to associate themselves with the near-term harms and AI ethics stuff because they think that is the higher-status stuff, despite direct obvious evidence that the highest-status people in the room disagree.