glad to see you back and writing again! It would be great for you to comment on the different platforms to make forecasts, Metaculus, GJ Open, or the many others out there!
Yes, I believe Substack's guidance is that 5-10% of free subscribers convert to paid subscriptions. I imagine it varies a lot from newsletter to newsletter, but I'm hoping the pledge feature will make it easier to capture how many potential paid subscribers I have.
That question seems to be at the heart of existential risk forecasting. I think the issue is not just the human propensity for violence but the extent to which we fail to consider the long-term impact of our decisions on our collective future. I wrote a paper arguing that AI risk is largely a collective action problem (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160791X2100124X), and I think it's broadly true of existential risk more generally. I also recommend Nick Bostrom's Vulnerable World paper (https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf) if you haven't read that already.
Sorry it took me so long to reply to this, Phil. I definitely don't think we're going to figure out how to make AI safe in the next six months. I don't think the signatories believe the pause is a solution to the problem of AI risk, so much as a thing that many people can agree on we can do to slow down reckless development and raise awareness of the issue. I don't think we'll get a complete pause by any means, but I think it may make companies like OpenAI pause some of its research. If nothing else, by shining a light on the issue the letter makes it awkward for any company that tries to roll out a buggy new large language model right now—especially since surveys suggest most people agree they're moving to fast on AI development.
I signed the Future of Life Institute's open letter calling for a major AI experiments to be paused (https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/) precisely because I think we probably should trade off the potential benefits of faster AI development to lower the risk of potentially serious costs.
Robert,
glad to see you back and writing again! It would be great for you to comment on the different platforms to make forecasts, Metaculus, GJ Open, or the many others out there!
Thanks, Darin! I still haven't tried a lot of the different platforms, but it's definitely something I should think about doing.
Thanks Phil.
Yes, I believe Substack's guidance is that 5-10% of free subscribers convert to paid subscriptions. I imagine it varies a lot from newsletter to newsletter, but I'm hoping the pledge feature will make it easier to capture how many potential paid subscribers I have.
That question seems to be at the heart of existential risk forecasting. I think the issue is not just the human propensity for violence but the extent to which we fail to consider the long-term impact of our decisions on our collective future. I wrote a paper arguing that AI risk is largely a collective action problem (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160791X2100124X), and I think it's broadly true of existential risk more generally. I also recommend Nick Bostrom's Vulnerable World paper (https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf) if you haven't read that already.
Sorry it took me so long to reply to this, Phil. I definitely don't think we're going to figure out how to make AI safe in the next six months. I don't think the signatories believe the pause is a solution to the problem of AI risk, so much as a thing that many people can agree on we can do to slow down reckless development and raise awareness of the issue. I don't think we'll get a complete pause by any means, but I think it may make companies like OpenAI pause some of its research. If nothing else, by shining a light on the issue the letter makes it awkward for any company that tries to roll out a buggy new large language model right now—especially since surveys suggest most people agree they're moving to fast on AI development.
Thanks, Phil. I'm glad you subscribed.
I signed the Future of Life Institute's open letter calling for a major AI experiments to be paused (https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/) precisely because I think we probably should trade off the potential benefits of faster AI development to lower the risk of potentially serious costs.