Robert Wright: belief

Transcript context

…bioweapon as an example, or any pandemic, you know, caused by a lab leak would be an example where the logic should point us toward international governance of some kind, climate change and on and on. But AI is just... I think i- it's an order of magnitude stronger i- in terms of how much it adds to the non-zero sum logic, and it's different from these other technologies in a way that makes it hard to predict the psychological impact on the species as a whole. Because, you know, one kind of, you might say, downside of technological threats traditionally is that they're, they're not very much like the threats that natural selection designed us to cooperate in the face of. Like, if you see an, a horde of enemy humans coming at you, you suddenly, you know, feel closer to the people in your tribe, right? And if you see a bunch of animals coming, same thing, you know. You, you and the group try to fend them off. But traditionally, technologies haven't been much like that. AI is just qualitatively different in a way that makes it harder to predict the psychological impact. It's, it's increasingly, I think, gonna seem to people like, yes, a form of intelligence, kinda like human intelligence. In some ways very appealing and, and even likable. In some ways scary. Uh, so I can't predict the effect, but I think it's very likely there's gonna be a large effect. I think it will, in fairly short order, change the way people think about their relationship to the other people on the planet, and quite possibly in a constructive way. Uh, and by the way, AI, here's more optimism. I mean, it's some form of hope. AI can, in principle, be part of the solution, you know. Sycophancy is not an inherent property of AIs. The mark- you know, corporate incentives may encourage it, and people may encourage it, but you can equally well imagine an AI that would be great at, you know, showing you that actually, you know, your, your spouse, you know... There are things that you do that are as annoying as the things that your spouse does. And the, the, a- and more, more importantly and subtly, like this thing that, that your s- your spouse just exploded about, like, there's a subtext there. The thing that set, that set them off isn't the real thing. You know how that works? Like, the- there's, there's a lot of kind of intelligent explaining that an intelligent system can do that makes us, I think, better and more considerate people, but that are in our self-interest. Like, we'd all rather live in a harmonious marriage, I think, right? And, and so again, this is a theme I, I visited earlier, but I, I think, you know, the AIs have the technical capacity to help us make, uh, the, you know, the kind of psychological adaptations whi- which I think in some cases will amount to a kind of a moral improvement that we, that we need to make. And I think the more we're aware of that, the better. I would also say, you know, Peter Singer's book, The Expanding Circle, I think documents that over time, actually our species has already undergone some moral improvement. e aware of that, the better. I would also say, you know, Peter Singer's book, The Expanding Circle, I think documents that over time, actually our species has already undergone some moral improvement. We've expanded the circle of moral consideration, notwithstanding some bi- some backsliding, and I, I, I think further progress is possible. So, you know, and I'm not an optimistic person by nature, so if I can muster even this much optimism, it's probably a good sign. One point that you made there that I think is really just worth driving home is just how broad the space of AI possibility is. I think that is really underappreciated by the public at large. It's more appreciated by the people developing the AIs because they've at least had an experience that was formative for me when I was doing the GPT-4 Red Team close to four years ago now. Amazing how much time-…

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