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JoshuaZ comments on Q&A with new Executive Director of Singularity Institute - Less Wrong
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Comments (177)
I believe that the SIAI has has been very successful in using OB/LW to not only rise awareness of risks from AI but to lend credence to the idea. From the very beginning I admired that feat.
Eliezer Yudkowsky's homepage is a perfect example of its type. Just imagine he would have concentrated solely on spreading the idea of risks from AI and the necessity of a friendliness theory. Without any background relating to business or an academic degree, to many people he would appear to be yet another crackpot spreading prophecies of doom. But someone who is apparently well-versed in probability theory, who studied cognitive biases and tries to refine the art of rationality? Someone like that can't possible be deluded enough to hold some complex beliefs that are completely unfounded, there must be more to it.
That's probably the biggest public relations stunt in the history of marketing extraordinary ideas.
Most of your analysis seems right, but the last sentence seems likely to be off. There have been a lot of clever PR stunts in history.
Most of them have not been targeting smart and educated nonconformists. Eliezer successfully changed people's mind by installing a way of thinking (a framework of heuristics, concepts and ideas) that is fine-tuned to non-obviously culminate in one inevitable conclusion, that you want to contribute money to his charity because it is rational to do so.
Take a look at the sequences in the light of the Singularity Institute. Even the Quantum Sequence helps to hit a point home that is indispensable to convince people, who would otherwise be skeptical, that it is rational to take risks from AI seriously. The Sequences promulgate that logical implications of general beliefs you already have do not cost you extra probability and that it would be logically rude to demand some knowably unobtainable evidence.
A true masterpiece.