Crossposted from the AI Alignment Forum. May contain more technical jargon than usual.

Tl;dr

When people work towards making a good future in regards to Transformative AI (TAI), what's the vision of the future that they have in mind and are working towards?

I’ll propose four (caricatured) answers that different people seem to give:

(Vision 1) “Helper AIs”,
(Vision 2) “Autonomous AIs”,
(Vision 3) “Supercharged biological human brains”,
(Vision 4) “Don’t build TAI”.

For each of these four, I will go through:

the typical assumptions and ideas that these people seem to typically have in mind;
potential causes for concern;
major people, institutions, and research directions associated with this vision.

I’ll interject a lot of my own opinions throughout, including a suggestion that, on the current margin, the community should be putting more direct effort into technical work towards contingency-planning for Vision 2.

Oversimplification Warning: This document is [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) Tl;dr

(01:31) Vision 1: “Helper AIs”—AIs doing specifically what humans want them to do

(01:37) 1.1 Typical assumptions and ideas

(02:28) 1.2 Potential causes for concern

(05:14) 1.3 Who is thinking about this? And if this is your vision, what should you be working on?

(07:18) Vision 2: “Autonomous AIs”—AIs out in the world, doing whatever they think is best

(07:25) 2.1 Typical assumptions and ideas

(11:18) 2.2 Potential causes for concern

(15:44) 2.3 Who is thinking about this? And if this is your vision, what should you be working on?

(18:58) 2.4 Hang on there Steve, this is your vision? This is what you actually want?

(20:52) Vision 3: Supercharged biological human brains (via intelligence-enhancement or merging-with-AI)

(21:01) 3.1 Typical assumptions and ideas

(21:58) 3.2 Potential causes for concern

(23:12) 3.3 Who is thinking about this? And if this is your vision, what should you be working on?

(24:35) Vision 4: Don’t build TAI

(24:39) 4.1 Typical assumptions and ideas

(25:26) 4.2 Potential causes for concern

(27:20) 4.3 Who is thinking about this? And if this is your vision, what should you be working on?

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
January 17th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3aicJ8w4N9YDKBJbi/four-visions-of-transformative-ai-success

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Four visions of Transformative AI success” by Steven Byrnes

LessWrong (30+ Karma)