And well, I'm not surprised nobody knows which generation of Ai could undergo an increase causing our extinction, it's not even sure if there could exist such a thing, let alone know which generation
It is not a contradiction be confident of the outcome while remaining very uncertain of the timing.
If I said so, you might ask me if I saw a doctor or something similar to make me suspect that, and that's my issue with him. He's a Sci fi writer that's scared of technology without a grasp of how it works, and that's OK. He can talk about what he fears, and that's OK. It still doesn't mean we should take him seriously just because.
My pet peeve is that when trying to make laws regarding Ai - at least in Europe - some considerations were done regarding how it worked, what it was (...), how it's being talked in academic literature. I had a lawyer in a course explaining that, and while not perfect you eventually settle on something that more or less is reasonable. With yudkowsky, you have a guy that is scared of nanotech and yada yada. Sure, he might be right. But if I had to act based on something, it would look much more the eu process to make laws and less the "Ai will totally kill us from now to 30 years trust me". Perhaps now I'm more clear
And don't get me started with the rationalist stuff that just assumes pain is linear and yada yada
At least he could learn to use some confidence intervals to make everything appear more serious /s
I'm very much in favor of research in Ai safety, maybe done with less scare and less threats of striking countries outside of the gpu limit agreement (and less bayes, God)