You may have seen factions of the left being opposed to current attempts to regulate the AI industry, despite the fact that they clearly also want to stop AI. I think I can explain why we're talking past each other.
To do this, I will define three different types of AI risk:
AI does exactly what some random guy wants: hacking, biorisk, terrorism
AI does exactly what people currently in power want (or puts people in power): military usage, job losses, wealth concentration, mass surveillance
AI does what nobody wants: takeover, turning the Earth into computronium, etc.
Most x-risk people are focused on the third risk and sometimes the first risk, but often appear to be blind to the second risk - whether it's because of ideology such as libertarianism, or motivated reasoning to obtain the US government's money, or because (as with many people here) the third risk is considered so important that the other two are discarded as irrelevant.
On the other hand, many people on the left-left only see the second risk, and interpret actions against the first or third risk as tacitly or actively encouraging the second risk. For example, pacing and monitoring laws often pattern-match to regulatory capture.
In my experience it is not difficult to get left-leftists to acknowledge the first risk; it's just that they're too scared of the second risk to take current policy proposals at their word. I have also made some of them less opposed to talking about the third risk by pointing out that stable totalitarianism and other s-risks are also considered a failure state.[1] But all the talking I've done about the third risk is still treated as "distracting" them from the second risk.
Thus: If you want cooperation from the left-left, youneedto acknowledge the existence of the second risk and put at least some mitigation into your policy proposals.[2]
Haphazard ten-minute brainstorm: UBI, as always. Significantly raising taxes on billionaires and/or IPOs. Additional protections for unions with regards to automation layoffs. A token tax at point of use (meant to make humans temporarily cheaper than automation for a few more years). Forbidding surveillance/profiling uses by police departments.
I'm sure people who actually know about policy have better ideas.
With this framing, I've found that these people consider a permanent underclass to be a type of s-risk, because it violates fairness and human dignity.
I've seen an objection to Bernie Sanders'AI sovereign wealth fund along the lines of: it makes the US government financially reliant on the AI industry, and thus would create a perverse incentive to encourage letting AI keep developing and bail it out when it crashes. This isn't my objection, it's someone else's, so I don't know how to answer questions about it.
You may have seen factions of the left being opposed to current attempts to regulate the AI industry, despite the fact that they clearly also want to stop AI. I think I can explain why we're talking past each other.
To do this, I will define three different types of AI risk:
Most x-risk people are focused on the third risk and sometimes the first risk, but often appear to be blind to the second risk - whether it's because of ideology such as libertarianism, or motivated reasoning to obtain the US government's money, or because (as with many people here) the third risk is considered so important that the other two are discarded as irrelevant.
On the other hand, many people on the left-left only see the second risk, and interpret actions against the first or third risk as tacitly or actively encouraging the second risk. For example, pacing and monitoring laws often pattern-match to regulatory capture.
In my experience it is not difficult to get left-leftists to acknowledge the first risk; it's just that they're too scared of the second risk to take current policy proposals at their word. I have also made some of them less opposed to talking about the third risk by pointing out that stable totalitarianism and other s-risks are also considered a failure state.[1] But all the talking I've done about the third risk is still treated as "distracting" them from the second risk.
Thus: If you want cooperation from the left-left, you need to acknowledge the existence of the second risk and put at least some mitigation into your policy proposals.[2]
Haphazard ten-minute brainstorm: UBI, as always. Significantly raising taxes on billionaires and/or IPOs. Additional protections for unions with regards to automation layoffs. A token tax at point of use (meant to make humans temporarily cheaper than automation for a few more years). Forbidding surveillance/profiling uses by police departments.
I'm sure people who actually know about policy have better ideas.
With this framing, I've found that these people consider a permanent underclass to be a type of s-risk, because it violates fairness and human dignity.
I've seen an objection to Bernie Sanders' AI sovereign wealth fund along the lines of: it makes the US government financially reliant on the AI industry, and thus would create a perverse incentive to encourage letting AI keep developing and bail it out when it crashes. This isn't my objection, it's someone else's, so I don't know how to answer questions about it.