Students asked to defend AGI danger update in favor of AGI riskiness

lukeprog

In the Spring semester of 2011, I decided to see how effectively I could communicate the idea of a threat from AGI to my undergraduate classes. I spent three sessions on this for each of my two classes. My goal was to convince my students that all of us are going to be killed by an artificial intelligence. My strategy was to induce the students to come up with the ideas themselves. I gave out a survey before and after. An analysis of the survey responses indicates that the students underwent a statistically significant shift in their reported attitudes. After the three sessions, students reported believing that AGI would have a larger impact1 and also a worse impact2 than they originally reported believing.

Not a surprising result, perhaps, but the details of how Geoff taught AGI danger and the reactions of his students are quite interesting.

From Geoff Anders of Leverage Research:

In the Spring semester of 2011, I decided to see how effectively I could communicate the idea of a threat from AGI to my undergraduate classes. I spent three sessions on this for each of my two classes. My goal was to convince my students that all of us are going to be killed by an artificial intelligence. My strategy was to induce the students to come up with the ideas themselves. I gave out a survey before and after. An analysis of the survey responses indicates that the students underwent a statistically significant shift in their reported attitudes. After the three sessions, students reported believing that AGI would have a larger impact1 and also a worse impact2 than they originally reported believing.

Not a surprising result, perhaps, but the details of how Geoff taught AGI danger and the reactions of his students are quite interesting.

This post seems to serve no purpose except to promote the dark arts.

A quote from the PDF:

Also, wherever possible I tried to choose material that was freaky. The Big Dog video is particularly good example, as lots of people seem to find Big Dog freaky. Of course, at no point did I comment on the freakiness. I did not want my students to think that I wanted to unsettle them. I simply wanted them to experience their own natural reactions as they witnessed the power of artificial intelligence unfolding in front of them.
I then played two clips from the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The first clip, from the very beginning

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Students asked to defend AGI danger update in favor of AGI riskiness

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Students asked to defend AGI danger update in favor of AGI riskiness

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