Tyler Cowen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…All right. Next question from David Golden: “What would allow a more productive dialogue about AI risks? Watching him and people like Zvi talk past each other is depressing.” It should be depressing. I’ve said for quite a while now that people who are more worried about AI risk than I am should try to go through peer review and develop a literature. The whole point of having a literature is you see what are the critical questions or what are not the critical questions. As far as I can tell, they still refuse to do this, even after what is now a fair number of years. Other than repeating the point that they ought to do that, I don’t know what else to say. Market prices are not predicting what they claim either. If peer review is not with you and market prices are not with you, even the super forecasters are, for the most part, not with them. I would just say, burden of proof is on them, and they ought to get their act together. Why do they have to do it in this traditional academic way where they have to become part of the literature and go through peer review? Since it’s fast-paced and so much of this discourse is happening online through essays and social media, why put that burden on them that they have to go into this more traditional form?…

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