"If you ask actual AI researchers, they rate the chance of an existential threat from AGI pretty low as of 2026.

All this is, understandably, frustrating and confusing for anyone trying to understand just how scared to be."

Meanwhile it links to an article stating: "The closest thing to a public debate about the existential threat of AI is surveys of AI researchers. The most recent, published last week, asked 1,580 researchers what probability they put on AI causing human extinction — or a permanent, severe loss of human control, which is not the same outcome. The median was about 10%, up from 5% two years ago. The middle half of the responses ran from 1% to 25%, and 12% said zero."

Personally if half of AI researchers have 1-25% chance all humans being massacred or having zero agency over our lives, and only 12% of them think there's no chance, I would be very worried!

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willguest a day ago | parent [-]

i don't understand why being an AI researcher makes you automatically skilled at assessing existential risk. sure, it qualifies you to research AI, but why are they all suddenly nostradamus?

	▲	Llamamoe 15 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It doesn't, but it does filter out people clueless about the topic itself at least, which is a better baseline than a survey of random people who self-claim to have insight into the matter.
	▲	pixl97 a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I can't tell you really anything about a nuclear weapon going off accidently. But I can tell you a lot about the probability of your computer systems getting hacked. So, yea, expertise gives you more information than a person without it.
	▲	TimedToasts a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		It's an Argument from Authority, nothing more.
	▲	AnimalMuppet a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Well, the people who don't study AIs are probably less able to assess the risk from AI.