Understanding the Landscape of Viewpoints on the Risks and Benefits of AI

I've seen seven main viewpoints on AI and the future from those who spend a lot of time thinking about it: (1) Superintelligence Doomers - they believe we are likely to build AI that's superintelligent (i.e., that surpasses human intelligence in all respects) and that once we do, it will kill or enslave humanity. See: Eliezer Yudkowsky "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made of atoms which it can use for something else." (2) AI Corrosionists - t...
More

The many forms of belief

Image by Izhak Agency on Unsplash
What does it mean to believe? We often say things like "I believe..." and "they think that..." But what do we really mean by a "belief"? It's notoriously tricky to define. For starters, we sometimes think of beliefs in binaries (true vs. false) and other times in probabilities (a 90% chance of coming true). We sometimes would be willing to bet on our beliefs ("I'll bet you $100 that New York City is not the capital of New York State"), and other times we wouldn't be willing to bet (e.g...
More

Obvious Defaults Perform The Best

It's surprising how often, in highly complex domains where we are trying to figure out what to do, an obvious or simple default can perform extremely well. This is sometimes even true when the defaults are clearly not optimal. Here are simple defaults in four complex domains that can be surprisingly hard to outperform: 1. Charity: give money to the poorest non-drug addicted people you can find, and let them do whatever they want with the money. GiveWell, which has spent yea...
More