Max TK

There is a popular tendency to dismiss people who are concerned about AI-safety as "doomsday prophets", carrying with it the suggestion that predicting an existential risk in the near future would automatically discredit them (because "you know; they have always been wrong in the past"). Example Argument Structure > Predictions of human extinction ("doomsday prophets") have never been correct in the past, therefore claims of x-risks are generally incorrect/dubious. Discussion/Difficulties This argument is persistent and kind of difficult to approach/deal with, in particular because it is technically a valid (yet, I argue, weak) point. It is an argument by induction based on a naive extrapolation of a historic trend. Therefore it cannot be completely dismissed by simple falsification through the use of an inconsistency or invalidation of one of its premises. Instead it becomes necessary to produce a convincing list of weaknesses - the more, the better. A list like the one that follows. #1: Unreliable Heuristic If you look at history, these kind of ad-hoc "things will stay the same" predictions are often incorrect. An example of this that is also related to technological developments would be the horse and mule populations in the US (back to below 10 million at present). #2: Survivorship Bias Not only are they often incorrect, there is a class of predictions for which they, by design/definition, can only be correct ONCE, and for these they are an even weaker argument, because your sample is affected by things like survivorship bias. Existential risk arguments are in this category, because you can only go extinct once. #3: Volatile Times We live in an highly unstable and unpredictable age shaped by rampant technological and cultural developments. The world today from the perspective of your grandparents is barely recognizable. In such times, this kind of argument becomes even weaker. This trend doesn't seem to slow down and there are strong arguments that eve