“I believe there’s about a 50% chance we all die because of the development of smarter-than-human AI systems, and that our actions over the next two to 10 years will determine the outcome.”

There are a gargantuan number of extremely intelligent AI researchers, Turing Award winners, and the lab CEOs saying the same thing. They are the ones closest to understanding the technology.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

▲

biophysboy 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Where does 50% come from? It is meaningless if the probability model is not explained.

	▲	0xDEAFBEAD 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		One could also use language like "a decent chance". But research has shown that people translate vague phrases like "a decent chance" into probabilities in inconsistent ways. For an ML researcher who is already used to dealing in next-token probabilities that aren't rigorously determined, just stating a probability estimate directly is very natural.

▲

swingandamiss 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't believe it. Ever since I've been alive I was told something would kill us all. This is the new thing that's going to kill us all. I don't believe it.

▲

dboreham 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This is the first thing I've been told could kill us all. Granted, I probably first heard about it 20 years ago but still. None of the other things were in the telling going to kill everyone. Make life pretty unpleasant, possibly. Everyone dead? No.

▲

pixl97 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm doing that HN snark thing, but you didn't think about what you typed very much.

It's no different than you living on the side of a very fertile mountain that has been in your family for generations living a peaceful life. Then you hear a few weird rumbles (this is where you are right now) and some odd geologist guy comes and says to run or your going to die soon. But hey, your family live here for so long there aren't even records of when they showed up. That geologist must be trying to trick you. So you stay.

The next chapter is where you die in a massive volcanic explosion.

▲

estearum an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you have some examples?

There are very very few things that could even hypothetically kill us all, so I'm curious if you grew up being passed around a series of apocalyptic doomsday cults or something?

▲

cobzilla 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Nukes. If you grew up in the 50s, 60s, 70s or 80s the specter of nuclear annihilation was always just around the corner.

Throw in the occasional bio-weapon scare, internet worm, Y2K, etc. there has always been something dangling over our heads that’s going to end it all.

But mostly nukes. Full-scale nuclear exchange would have been not much of a surprise had it happened.

▲

swingandamiss 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Y2K, Climate Change (global cooling, global warming), ozone layer, Russians, Muslims, to name a few. Now go ahead and tell me why these don't count.

▲

pcthrowaway 14 minutes ago | parent [-]

Almost no one believed Y2K would kill everyone, or even a significant (>50%) percentage of the population. Beyond a few people talking about a Nostradamus prophecy or some such, people maybe were concerned that airplanes would fall out of the sky and elevators would plummet.

	▲	swingandamiss 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There you go.