Agree, roughly, that AI safety and AI ethics positions are broadly aligned and that greater cooperation between the two would be beneficial to all, but it's worth anticipating how the prescriptions here could backfire. A paragraph such as:
I am saddened by those in my community who have treated you harshly, but I just wanted to let you know, even when I don't agree with everything you say, I value you and think your research is valuable. To say else wise would be irrational.
could itself easily be perceived, by someone who is predisposed to suspicion toward rationalists, as backhanded, overly familiar, and/or condescending, regardless of its actual intentions. As well, the language around the concluding suggestion toward joining AI safety and bias groups may very well be seen by a suspicious reader as a plan of action for infiltration of such groups, no matter what level of transparency is actually prescribed.
That said, I'll offer that any worthwhile cooperation with ethics/bias groups (as, like other commenters pointed out, some in those circles simply won't bother to engage in good faith) is unlikely to come from demonstrations of personal friendliness, but from demonstrations of willingness to take aligned action. The comment that safety/risk people could have a lot to learn from bias/risk people and should do so seems pretty sound. On that, some areas I think plenty of rationalists should (and probably do) have concern for:
The usage of current and under-development AI systems for surveillance and undermining of privacy rights.
The development of predictive policing, which in addition to privacy concerns, poses the problems of false positives, overzealousness due to false confidence, and discriminatory usage (getting at similar things here to Yudkowsky in the linked article on police reform).
The production and dissemination of misinformation, which could be used by malicious actors to stoke panic and destabilise sectors of society for outside political gain. (Shiri's Scissor, anyone?)
This is not to say that anyone invested in safety/x-risk should deprioritise in favour of these issues. Rather, I believe that, as discussed, there is substantial alignment on these issues between safety and ethics groups already, that there is a lot of benefit to gain from greater cooperation between safety/risk actors and ethics/bias actors, and that a strategy of publicly pursuing research and action on these issues would result in an overall net gain of utility for all parties, including a good chance of reducing/mitigating multiple different kinds of AI risks.
On Twitter, there has been some concerning discourse about rationalism and AI. I'd rather not link to it directly, but just look up the term "TESCREAL" on Twitter. The R stands for rationalism. Here is a particularly strong tweet:
From what I can tell, the "contra-TESCREAL" (as I am coining it) crowd do not seem interested in object level arguments about AI existential safety at this time. They are analyzing the situation purely from a social perspective.
So, what do we do? Do we get mad at them? What is the rational thing to do?
I think the answer is understanding and kindness.
AI safetyists and AI ethicists are aligned
The trigger seems to have been the difference between AI safety and AI ethics. However, I'd like to argue we are quite aligned each other, as the vast majority of human groups ultimately are.
So I think it's fair to say that we have a similar utility function; AI safetyists and AI ethicists just come into conflict because they have different beliefs about how likely the singularity is. In the specific case of contra-TESCREAL, they also don't understand rationalist conversational norms. But I fear most of us don't understand their conversational norms either.
This is why I am proposing the prefix "contra-" instead of "anti-"; we are not enemies, we are in disagreement.[1]
How to respond?
I feel like most rationalists first instinct is to respond like a straw vulcan. But like I said, they are not interested in object level arguments. Rationality is whatever causes winning, but what is winning in this scenario?
I think the teachings of Jesus apply well:
How contra-TESCREAL feel about us is part of their map. Their map is not the territory, but it is part of the territory.
I decided to write the following email to Timnit Gebru:
And a similar one to Emily Bender.
I invite all of you to send similar emails and messages to members of the contra-TESCREAL group. This is particularly important because I fear that there are members of our community sending harsh and condemning messages. Even if it is not their intention to cause problems (they just think they are presenting arguments), it needs to be balanced out.
Concluding thoughts
Although I must admit there was some temptation to call them WaTESCREAL.