I recently watched the movie “Don’t look up”. The movie has a couple main messages, all of which are great. Max Tegmark has a nice Times article about why this movie is similar to the AI situation. I’ll say some different stuff here though.
- Bad incentives cloud judgement. The guys in the movie got really excited about the money in the asteroid. This was not good.
The people in charge of AI development right now (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic) seem to be substantially better people, much smarter, much more willing to be outspoken etc than the people in the movie. But I still worry about bad incentives (or motivated reasoning) clouding their judgement. Hopefully they’re working on solutions to this. But as a concerned citizen you shouldn’t count on that and should ask the government to step in with regulation. Leaders of the AI companies are even calling for federal regulation! So they’re on board (okay they’re not on board with something like a 20 year pause --- but they don’t really have a choice if that’s what is called for). So let’s have some regulation.
- You should shout at people. Ok I don’t mean this literally. What I’m referring to is that in the movie, a main character would tell some news people about the asteroid that was going to hit earth, and then they’d be like --- oh, interesting. And then the girl would scream at them “what do you freaking mean??? I’m telling you that you and everyone that you love will die in X amount of time! Do you understand?” Anyways, people don’t like understanding these things.
I’ve had this experience a lot lately. I’ll be like --- hey, I think in the next 4 years there’s a pretty decent chance of an AI takeover causing the extinction of humanity, so I’m departing from my default life trajectory and actually trying to do something about it.
And (some) people will be like --- good for you man, that’s cool.
How can you be so apathetic! How have you not understood what I’ve said! Anyways, I’m somewhat prone to just leaving the conversation there. But it seems interesting to call people out on this. Really, either tell me why I’m wrong or you should freak out and do something. I don’t buy that you’d act this chill-ly if I told you that you and your dog and your mom and all your friends were terminally ill. Maybe the problem is that the scope is too big, such that it triggers people’s absurdity heuristic or something.
- They get partial credit for trying.
Obviously they still all died (oops, spoiler; but really it would have been a terrible movie if anything else had happened). So what do I mean that they get partial credit. All I mean is that this is the way I’d like to live my life. To not resign the game until it’s actually over.
Even if it is hopeless --- which, for the record, it’s not. It’s the right thing to do.
Standard disclaimers apply --- like when communicating make sure that you’re not making the situation worse, just blindly taking actions because it feels good to at least do something is dumb and plausibly net-negative.
- At the end, you should eat dinner with some friends.
I found this scene sweet. On their last day, they went to star market, got some potatoes and had a little dinner with friends. It was a fairly dignified way to go.
So yes. Fight. Somehow realize the simple lessons of
- ”If you don’t do something then nobody will”
- Unpleasantness of proposition X is not evidence that X is false
- We can lose
- If you wait until you’re certain that something is a problem to do something about it, or wait till its a problem and then react. Then maybe you’re too late. and then do something.
Also maintain some nice relationships. Make dinner with your friends. Are there things that you would regret not having done if you died tonight? A friend you would have liked to have called? Do this before going to bed.
Anyways, I hope this post has been very inspirational and stuff. so i’ll finish with a nice quote from HPMOR:
There is no justice in the laws of Nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don’t care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don’t have to! We care! There is light in the world, and it is us!
Good night my friends.
Good night.