Eradicating mosquitoes would be incredibly difficult from a logistical standpoint. Even if we could accomplish this goal, doing so would cause large harm to the environment, which humans would prefer to avoid. By contrast, providing a steady stored supply of blood to feed all the mosquitoes that would have otherwise fed on humans would be relatively easy for humans to accomplish. Note that, for most mosquito species, we could use blood from domesticated mammals like cattle or pigs, not just human blood.
When deciding whether to take an action, a rational agent does not merely consider whether that action would achieve their goal. Instead, they identify which action would achieve their desired outcome at the lowest cost. In this case, trading blood with mosquitoes would be cheaper than attempting to eradicate them, even if we assigned zero value to mosquito welfare. The reason we do not currently trade with mosquitoes is not that eradication would be cheaper. Rather, it is because trade is not feasible.
You might argue that future technological progress will make eradication the cheaper option. However, to make this argument, you would need to explain why technological progress will reduce the cost of eradication without simultaneously reducing the cost of producing stored blood at a comparable rate. If both technologies advance together, trade would remain relatively cheaper than extermination. The key question is not whether an action is possible. The key question is which strategy achieves our goal at the lowest relative cost.
If you predict that eradication will become far cheaper while trade will not become proportionally cheaper, thereby making eradication the rational choice, then I think you'd simply be making a speculative assertion. Unless it were backed up by something rigorous, this prediction would not constitute meaningful empirical evidence about how trade functions in the real world.
In the case of ants, we wouldn't even consider signing a trade deal with them or exchanging goods. We just take their stuff or leave them alone.
Consider mosquitoes instead. Imagine how much better off both species would be if we could offer mosquitoes large quantities of stored blood in exchange for them never biting humans again. Both sides would clearly gain from such an arrangement. Mosquitoes would receive a large, reliable source of food, and humans would be freed from annoying mosquito bites and many tropical diseases.
The reason this trade does not happen is not that humans are vastly more powerful than mosquitoes, but that mutual coordination is impossible. Obviously, we cannot communicate with mosquitoes. Mosquitoes cannot make commitments or agreements. But if we could coordinate with them, we would -- just as our bodies coordinate with various microorganisms, or many of the animals we domesticate.
The barrier to trade is usually not about power; it is about coordination. Trade occurs when two entities are able to coordinate their behavior for mutual benefit. That is the key principle.
What about a scenario where no laws are broken, but over the course of months to years large numbers of humans are unable to provide for themselves as a consequence of purely legal and non violent actions by AIs? A toy example would be AIs purchasing land used for agriculture for other means (you might consider this an indirect form of violence).
I'd consider it bad if AIs take actions that result in a large fraction of humans becoming completely destitute and dying as a result.
But I think such an outcome would be bad whether it's caused by a human or an AI. The more important question, I think, is whether such an outcome is likely to occur if we grant AIs legal rights. The answer to this, I think, is no. I anticipate that AGI-driven automation will create so much economic abundance in the future that it will likely be very easy to provide for the material needs of all biological humans.
Generally I think biological humans will receive income through charitable donations, government welfare programs, in-kind support from family members, interest, dividends, by selling their assets, or by working human-specific service jobs where consumers intrinsically prefer hiring human labor (e.g., maybe childcare). Given vast prosperity, these income sources seem sufficient to provide most humans with an adequate, if not incredibly high, standard of living.
My views on AI have indeed changed over time, on a variety of empirical and normative questions, but I think you're inferring larger changes than are warranted from that comment in isolation.
Here's a comment from 2023 where I said:
The term "AI takeover" is ambiguous. It conjures an image of a violent AI revolution, but the literal meaning of the term also applies to benign scenarios in which AIs get legal rights and get hired to run our society fair and square. A peaceful AI takeover would be good, IMO.
In fact, I still largely agree with the comment you quoted. The described scenario remains my best guess for how things could go wrong with AI. However, I chose my words poorly in that comment. Specifically, I was not clear enough about what I meant by "disempowerment."
I should have distinguished between two different types of human disempowerment. The first type is violent disempowerment, where AIs take power by force. I consider this morally bad. The second type is peaceful or voluntary disempowerment, where humans willingly transfer power to AIs through legal and economic processes. I think this second type will likely be morally good, or at least morally neutral.
My moral objection to "AI takeover", both now and back then, applies primarily to scenarios where AIs suddenly seize power through unlawful or violent means, against the wishes of human society. I have, and had, far fewer objections to scenarios where AIs gradually gain power by obtaining legal rights and engaging in voluntary trade and cooperation with humans.
The second type of scenario is what I hope I am working to enable, not the first. My reasoning for accelerating AI development is straightforward: accelerating AI will produce medical breakthroughs that could save billions of lives. It will also accelerate dramatic economic and technological progress that will improve quality of life for people everywhere. These benefits justify pushing forward with AI development.
I do not think violent disempowerment scenarios are impossible, just unlikely. And I think that pausing AI development would not meaningfully reduce the probability of such scenarios occurring. Even if pausing AI did reduce this risk, I think the probability of violent disempowerment is low enough that accepting this risk is justified by the billions of lives that faster AI development could save.
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1She asks why the book doesn’t spend more time explaining why an intelligence explosion is likely to occur. The answer is the book is explicitly arguing a conditional, what happens if it does occur, and acknowledges that it may or may not occur, or occur on any given time frame.
Is it your claim here that the book is arguing the conditional: "If there's an intelligence explosion, then everyone dies?" If so, then it seems completely valid to counterargue: "Well, an intelligence explosion is unlikely to occur, so who cares?"
I expect there are no claims to the effect that there will be only one chance to correctly align the first AGI.
For the purpose of my argument, there is no essential distinction between 'the first AGI' and 'the first ASI'. My main point is to dispute the idea that there will be a special 'it' at all, which we need to align on our first and only try. I am rejecting the scenario where a single AI system suddenly takes over the world. Instead, I expect AI systems will continuously and gradually assume more control over the world over time. In my view, there will not be one decisive system, but rather a continuous process of AIs assuming greater control over time.
To understand the distinction I am making, consider the analogy of genetically engineering humans. By assumption, if the tech continues improving, there will eventually be a point where genetically engineered humans will be superhuman in all relevant respects compared to ordinary biological humans. They will be smarter, stronger, healthier, and more capable in every measurable way. Nonetheless, there is no special point at which we develop 'the superhuman'. There is no singular 'it' to build, which then proceeds to take over the world in one swift action. Instead, genetically engineered humans would simply progressively get smarter, more capable, and more powerful across time as the technology improves. At each stage of technological innovation, these enhanced humans would gradually take over more responsibilities, command greater power in corporations and governments, and accumulate a greater share of global wealth. The transition would be continuous rather than discontinuous.
Yes, at some point such enhanced humans will possess the raw capability to take control over the world through force. They could theoretically coordinate to launch a sudden coup against existing institutions and seize power all at once. But the default scenario seems more likely: a continuous transition from ordinary human control over the world to superhuman genetically engineered control over the world. They would gradually occupy positions of power through normal economic and political processes rather than through sudden conquest.
You're saying that slow growth on multiple systems means we can get one of them right, by course correcting.
That's not what I'm saying. My argument was not about multiple simultaneously existing systems growing slowly together. It was instead about how I dispute the idea of a unique or special point in time when we build "it" (i.e., the AI system that takes over the world), the value of course correction, and the role of continuous iteration.
As the review makes very clear, the argument isn't about AGI, it's about ASI. And yes, they argue that you would in fact only get one chance to align the system that takes over.
I'm aware; I was expressing my disagreement with their argument. My comment was not premised on whether we were talking about "the first AGI" or "the first ASI". I was making a more fundamental point.
In particular: I am precisely disputing the idea that there will be "only one chance to align the system that takes over". In my view, the future course of AI development will not be well described as having a single "system that takes over". Instead, I anticipate waves of AI deployment that gradually, and continuously assume more control.
I fundamentally dispute the entire framing of thinking about "the system" that we need to align on our "first try". I think AI development is an ongoing process in which we can course correct. I am disputing that there is an important, unique point when we will build "it" (i.e. the ASI).
I would strongly disagree with the notion that FOOM is “a key plank” in the story for why AI is dangerous. Indeed, one of the most useful things that I, personally, got from the book, was seeing how it is *not* load bearing for the core arguments.
I think the primary reason why the foom hypothesis seems load-bearing for AI doom is that without a rapid AI and local takeoff, we won't simply get "only one chance to correctly align the first AGI [ETA: or the first ASI]".
If foom occurs, there will be a point where a company develops an AGI that quickly transitions from being just an experimental project to something capable of taking over the entire world. This presents a clear case for caution: if the AI project you're working on will undergo explosive recursive self-improvement, then any alignment mistakes you build into it will become locked in forever. You cannot fix them after deployment because the AI will already have become too powerful to stop or modify.
However, without foom, we are more likely to see a gradual and diffuse transition from human control over the world to AI control over the world, without any single AI system playing a critical role in the transition by itself. The fact that the transition is not sudden is crucial because it means that no single AI release needs to be perfectly aligned before deployment. We can release imperfect systems, observe their failures, and fix problems in subsequent versions. Our experience with LLMs demonstrates this pattern, where we could fix errors after deployment, making sure future model releases don't have the same problems (as illustrated by Sydney Bing, among other examples).
A gradual takeoff allows for iterative improvement through trial and error, and that's simply really important. Without foom, there is no single critical moment where we must achieve near-perfect alignment without any opportunity to learn from real-world deployment. There won't be a single, important moment where we abruptly transition from working on "aligning systems incapable of taking over the world" to "aligning systems capable of taking over the world". Instead, systems will simply gradually and continuously get more powerful, with no bright lines.
Without foom, we can learn from experience and course-correct in response to real-world observations. My view is that this fundamental process of iteration, experimentation, and course correction in response to observed failures makes the problem of AI risk dramatically more tractable than it would be if foom were likely.
My goal in my original comment was narrow: to demonstrate that a commonly held model of trade is incorrect. This naive model claims (roughly): "Entities do not trade with each other when one party is vastly more powerful than the other. Instead, in such cases, the more powerful entity rationally wipes out the weaker one." This model fails to accurately describe the real world. Despite being false, this model appears popular, as I have repeatedly encountered people asserting it, or something like it, including in the post I was replying to.
I have some interest in discussing how this analysis applies to future trade between humans and AIs. However, that discussion would require extensive additional explanation, as I operate from very different background assumptions than most people on LessWrong regarding what constraints future AIs will face and what forms they will take. I even question whether the idea of "an ASI" is a meaningful concept. Without establishing this shared context first, any attempt to discuss whether humans will trade with AIs would likely derail the narrow point I was trying to make.
Indeed, we likely do have extremely different pictures of the world.