Should we be worried about being preserved in an unpleasant state?
I’ve seen surprisingly little discussion about the risk of everyone being “trapped in a box for a billion years”, or something to that affect. There are many plausible reasons why keeping us around could be worth it, such as to sell us to aliens in the future. Even if it turns out to be not worth it for an AI to keep us around, it may take a long time for it to realise this.
Should we not expect to be kept alive, atleast until an AI has extremely high levels of confidence that we aren’t useful? If so, is our state of being likely to be bad while we are preserved?
This seems like one of the most likely s-risks to me.
In a similar vein to this, I think that AI’s being called “tools” is likely to be harmful. It is a word which I believe downplays the risks, while also objectifying the AI’s. The objectification of something which may actually be conscious seems like an obvious step in a bad direction.
Takeover speeds?
For the purpose of his shortform, I am considering “takeover” to start when crazy things begin happening or it is clear that an unaligned AGI/AGI’s are attempting to takeover. I consider “takeover“ to have ended when humanity is extinct or similarly subjugated. This is also under the assumption that a takeover does happen.
From my understanding of Eliezer’s views, he believes takeover will be extremely fast (possibly seconds). Extremely fast takeovers make a lot more sense if you assume that a takeover will be more like a sneak attack.
How fast do you think takeover will be? (if it happens)
Do you expect to just suddenly drop dead?, or do you expect to have enough time to say goodbye to your loved ones?, or do you expect to see humanity fight for months or years before we lose?
Your response does illustrate that there are holes in my explanation. Bob 1 and Bob 2 do not exist at the same time. They are meant to represent one person at two different points in time.
A separate way I could try to explain what kind of resurrection I am talking about is to imagine a married couple. An omniscient husband would have to care as much about his wife after she was resurrected as he did before she died.
I somewhat doubt that I could patch all of the holes that could be found in my explanation. I would appreciate it if you try to answer what I am trying to ask.
I seem to remember your P(doom) being 85% a short while ago. I’d be interested to know why it has dropped to 70%, or in another way of looking at it, why you believe our odds of non-doom have doubled.
I have edited my shortform to try to better explain what I mean by “the same”. It is kind of hard to do so, especially as I am not very knowledgeable on the subject, but hopefully it is good enough.
Do you believe that resurrection is possible?
By resurrection I mean the ability to bring back people, even long after they have died and their body has decayed or been destroyed. I do not mean simply bringing someone back who has been cryonically frozen. I also mean bringing back the same person who died, not simply making a clone.
I will try to explain what I mean by “the same”. Lets call the person before they died “Bob 1” and the resurrected version ”Bob 2”. Bob 1 and Bob 2 are completely selfish and only care about themselves. In the version of resurrection I am talking about, Bob 1 cares as much about Bob 2’s experience as Bob 1 would care about Bob 1’s future experience, had Bob 1 not died.
It is kind of tricky to articulate exactly what I mean when I say “the same”, but I hope the above is good enough.
If you want to, an estimate of the percentage chance of this being possible would be cool, but if you just want to give your thoughts I would be interested in that aswell.
I just want to express my surprise at the fact that it seems that the view that the default outcome from unaligned AGI is extinction is not as prevalent as I thought. I was under the impression that literally everyone dying was considered by far the most likely outcome, making up probably more than 90% of the space of outcomes from unaligned AGI. From comments on this post, this seems to not be the case.
I am know distinctly confused as to what is meant by “P (doom)”. Is it the chance of unaligned AGI? Is it the chance of everyone dying? Is it the chance of just generally bad outcomes?
Is there something like a pie chart of outcomes from AGI?
I am trying to get a better understanding of the realistic scenarios and their likelihoods. I understand that the likelihoods are very disagreed upon.
My current opinion looks a bit like this:
30%: Human extinction
10%: Fast human extinction
20%: Slower human extinction
30%: Alignment with good outcomes
20%: Alignment with at best mediocre outcomes
20%: Unaligned AGI, but at least some humans are still alive
12%: We are instrumentally worth not killing
6%: The AI wireheads us
2%: S-risk from the AI having producing suffering as one of its terminal goals
I decided to break down the unaligned AGI scenarios a step further.
If there are any resources specifically to refine my understanding of the possible outcomes and their likelihoods, please tell me of them. Additionally, if you have any other relevant comments I’d be glad to hear them.
First of all, I basically agree with you. It seems to me that in scenarios where we are preserved, preservation is likely to be painless and most likely just not experienced by those being preserved.
But, my confidence that this is the case is not that high. As a general comment, I do get concerned that a fair amount of pushback on the likelihood of s-risk scenarios is based on what “seems” likely.
I usually don’t disagree on what “seems” likely, but it is difficult for me to know if “seems” means a confidence level of 60%, or 99%.