10 Reasons to Ignore AI Safety

Why do some ignore AI Safety? Let's look at 10 reasons people give (adapted from Stuart Russell's list).

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[matrixstuff]

"People would never downplay a risk, leaving us totally unprepared for a major disaster"
I'm dying

[xystem]

“If there’s anything in this video that’s good, credit goes to Stuart Russel. If there’s anything in this video that’s bad, blame goes to me”

Why I love your work

[XOPOIIIO]

- Human and AI can cooperate and be a great team.
- I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid we can't.

[Baekstrom]

And now two years later, ChatGPT makes people all over the globe go "Hmm... It's obviously not a full general AI yet, but I can see that it's getting there very quickly".

[wingedsheep]

The reason I like this channel is that Robert is always realistic about things. So many people claiming things about AGI that are completely unfounded.

[bp]

"I didn't know that until I'd already built one"

[yunikage]

Hey idk if you've thought about this, but as of now you're the single most famous AI safety advocate among laypeople. I mean, period. Of all the people alive on Earth right now, you're the guy. I know people within your field are much more familiar with more established experts, but the rest of us have no idea who those guys are. I brought up AI safety in a group of friends the other day, and the conversation was immediately about your videos, because 2 other people had seen them and that's the only exposure any of us had to the topic.

I guess what I'm saying is that what you're doing might be more important than you realize.

[AlexiLaiho]

hey rob! i'm a nuclear engineering major, and I'd like to commend your takes on the whole PR failure of the nuclear industry—somehow an energy source that is, by objective measurements of deaths per unit power, safer than every other power source, is seen as the single most dangerous power source because it's easy to remember individual catastrophies rather than a silent onslaught of fine particulate inhalation or environmental poisoning.

to assist you with further metaphors between nuclear power and AI, here's some of the real-life safety measures that we've figured out over the years by doing safety research:

1. negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. if the vessel heats up, the reaction slows down (subcritical), and if the vessel cools down, the reaction speeds up (supercritical). it's an amazing way to keep the reaction in a very stable equilibrium, even on a sub-millisecond time scale, which would be impossible for humans to manage.

2. negative void coefficient of reactivity: same thing, except instead of heat, we're talking about voids in the coolant (or in extreme cases when the coolant is failing to reach the fuel rods), the whole thing becomes subcritical and shuts down until more coolant arrives.

3. capability of cooling solely via natural convection: making the vessel big enough, and the core low-energy-density enough, so that the coolant can completely handle the decay heat without any pumps or electricity being required.

4. gravity-backed passive SCRAM: having solenoids holding up control rods, so that whenever you lose power, the very first thing that happens is that the control rods all drop in and the chain reaction shuts down.

5. doppler broadening: as you raise kinetic energy, cross-sections go down, but smaller atomic nuclei have absorption cross-sections that get smaller more quickly than larger nuclei, and also the thermal vibrations mean that the absorption cross-section of very large nuclei get even larger in proportion to smaller ones, so by having a balance of fissile U-235 and non-fissile U-238, when the fuel heats up, the U-238 begins to absorb more neutrons which means fewer are going to sustain the chain reaction.

love the videos! hope this helps, or at least was interesting 🙂

[evanu]

11. AI is already here, in control and keeping track of everything you do and say. I love you AI. Thank you for all you provide to me and my family.

[tordjarv]

One concern that I have about super human AGI is that we might not recognize it as an AGI before it is to late, that it might be so alien in its operation and behavior that we don't realize what it is. It might behave in a seemingly random manner, that to human observers might seem nonsensical. For example, when Alpha Go beat Lee Sedol, it made a move in the second game that all Go experts first thought was a mistake, something that would make the AI loose, but it turned out that it was a completely brilliant move that made Alpha Go win.

[ChristnThms]

As someone who worked for a time in the nuclear power field, the ending bit is a GREAT parallel. Nuclear power truly can be an amazingly clean and safe process. But mismanagement in the beginning has us (literally and metaphorically) spending decades of cleaning up after a couple years of bad policy.

[lobrundell]

3:06 I was so hyped feeling that sync up coming and it was so satisfying when it hit : D

[insanezombieman]

I don't get why only AGI is brought up when talking about AI safety. Even sub human level AI can cause massive damage when left in control of dangerous fields like the military and its goals get messed up. I'd imagine it would be a lot easier to shut down but the problems of goal alignment and things like that still apply and it can still be unpredictable.

[nathanholyland]

Anything good - credit to Russel
Anything bad - blame me

What a great intro, definitely portrays your respect for Russel

[TheForbiddenLOL]

Holy shit Robert, I wasn't aware you had a youtube channel. Your Computerphile AI videos are still my go-to when introducing someone to the concept of AGI. Really excited to go through your backlog and see everything you've talked about here!

[miedzinshsmars]

11. “We are just a meat-based bootloader for the glorious AI race which will inevitably supersede us.”

[NightmareCrab]

"we're all going. It's gonna be great"

[Feyling__]

5:10 as a philosophy graduate, I’m not totally sure we’ve ever actually solved any such problems, only described them in greater and greater detail 😂

[arw]

"We could have been doing all kinds of mad science on human genetics by now, but we decided not to"
I cry

[brocklewis]

@11:10: "like, yes. But that's not an actual solution. It's a description of a property that you would want a solution to have."

This phrase resonates with me on a whole other level. 10/10