Robert Wright: belief

Transcript context

…... even the simple bee, right? I mean, obviously there's variation from place to place, but the fact that there's basically what amounts to a bee in every corner of the world is not the way it always was. You know, if, if humans were sitting around moralizing when the bees showed up, we would've called them invasive species and, like, wrung our hands about them. But, you know, now we just take it for granted, of course. But sometimes I think that AI might be, like, the ultimate invasive species, and it's just really important to keep in mind, I think, for people as we confront our current situation that, like, there were a lot of things that were displaced by all these, you know, these kind of global success stories, bees, frogs, and whatever, right? You got frogs that live under the sand in the desert and that freeze in the winter in the Arctic and thaw in the spring, and a lot of things were displaced by those. So for us, we should, I think, be very mindful of the fact that the niche that we occupy as sort of things that don't survive super well, you know, without a lot of capital to support us, is, like, pretty similar maybe to the niche that the AIs might be best suited to colonize. And y- the, the sort of plot armor that a lot of people tend to assume, you know, or subc- not, not consciously, right, but, like, I think implicitly assume will kind of protect us just wasn't there for a lot of other things when, when newcomers came onto the scene. Of course we too ourselves, right, you know, drove our closest cousins and, and much of the megafauna to extinction. Like, these sort of major plot twists have happened, like, tons of times, and we just haven't really experienced them or internalized that. But boy, I think a, a long, you know, read of history there is, like, kind of sobering, to put it mildly. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think one virtue of taking that long evolutionary, you know, view is I, I hope it helps you appreciate the possibility that there's a very strong impetus behind the evolution of AI. And I, and I do think in, in a number of ways, evolution is a, is the, a helpful way to, to, to think of it. And, and you know, I've talked about arms races as, uh, I mean, as if they were bad, but I'm not, I'm not naive. I mean, arms races are always, you know, they, they are often part of a creative process in evolution. A- and one, you know, I, I emphasize in the, in the book that y- you know, in, in textbooks, in biology textbooks, you look up arms races, it's likely to talk about races between species. But arms races within species, including the human species, have been very important, including in the development, I think, of our deceptive tendencies and our skills of argumentation and, for that matter, our power seeking. That's involved arms races within the species to get genes into the next generation. And so, you know, i- it's, you're not gonna avoid the dynamic. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not suggesting that, that technology always has a little bit of that in it. I mainly wanna say that, A, it's such a powerful impetus that we should reckon on this stuff continuing to advance, I mean, for that reason and the reason I alluded to, which is that it's just pretty clear given the nature of the technology that, that there's a lot of potential for further advance. But B, we should worry about what you could call gratuitous arms races, and particularly dangerous kinds of arms races that get in the way of our reckoning with the technology. But I, I hope the idea of evolutionary impetus will lead us to recognize we have to reckon with the technology. It's like it is a force. It's not, it's not... A- and maybe a lot of technological evolution in retrospect is more of a force than we appreciated. This is a force that is unfolding very rapidly in real time, imposes all kinds of challenges across a lot of domains, and even if you don't buy the hardcore sci-fi doomer scenarios, and I'm sorry to report that I'm unable to dismiss them entirely after carefully examining them. You know, when I talked to Eliezer in, uh, 2010, I... You can see I, I'm even kind of a jerk. I, I, I, I'm, I, I'm kind of dismissive, uh, o- of the scenarios. I, I no longer am. Um, but even that aside, this is gonna hit us along so many fronts, right? It's gonna be disruptive in the not necessarily good sense of the term, you know, economically, politically, culturally, family life, friendship. You just name it, it's gonna hit in a lot of places at once. And I just say it's gonna be an earthquake, and, uh, we need to start thinking about it now. itically, culturally, family life, friendship. You just name it, it's gonna hit in a lot of places at once. And I just say it's gonna be an earthquake, and, uh, we need to start thinking about it now. I mean, may- I'm sorry if I sound too much of like an evangelist on this 'cause, you know, a lot of your Audience may already be a, AI safety pill, but God knows not everyone in the AI, uh, community is, and certainly not everyone shares my concerns ab-about a specifically US, uh, China arms race. But…

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