Zizians -- a sign of things to come?
Since 2018 I've believed that super human AI is a fairly easy task & would probably show up sooner (eg 2030) rather than later (eg 2080)
†. Personally I think ‘120 IQ’ people could do it w/o even being especially creative or out of the box. But more creative & smarter people will (obviously) tend to do it first. (Bitter disagreements between me & the LW mainstream WRT alignment are a separate issue).
But despite having believed this for 6 years, now that it seems to be happening, I'm more anxious/confused/excited. Even ignoring possible harm to humans, the situation is super weird -- we don't even know how much consciousness these things have!
In my personal experience even people who believe {AI will do ‘every thing’ in 10 years} then talk about other things eg demographic transition or dependency ratios as if AI doesn't exist. These are knowledgeable smart people, but they have ingrained ways of thinking that are slow to update. Ignoring culture war stuff university life is oddly similar to what it was 20 years ago; students & postdocs seem to be pursuing the same career paths.
I think there's some (vague) analogy to Trump's 2016 victory. B/c it was so odd relative to the past, people tended to dismiss it despite the very close polls. But then when it happened so many of these people went into a frenzy. Super human AI is a much bigger deal than Trump!
Zizians to their credit were at least taking AI seriously, but this drove them to extremes
There are things that don't (directly) matter to LW. But they matter in general. It's 5785 AM in the Hebrew calendar. The messiah is supposed to show up by 6000 (6001?) AM or earlier. It's almost 1400 years since the death of Muhammad; maybe that doesn't matter? It's almost 2000 years since the death of Jesus; that definitely matter at least a bit.
My point is not to scare people. It's closer to the opposite. My point is… If there's a rouge wave of deranged shocking behavior in the near future, it's better to not be shocked. Being very shocked will cause the problem to self amplifying. Maybe 1-5% of people having the right attitude is enough to prevent most of the preventable harm.
Hzn