xkcd on the AI box experiment

FiftyTwo

I guess there'll be a fair bit of traffic coming from people looking it up?

So I'm going to say this here rather than anywhere else, but I think Eliezer's approach to this has been completely wrong headed. His response has always come tinged with a hint of outrage and upset. He may even be right to be that upset and angry about the internet's reaction to this, but I don't think it looks good! From a PR perspective, I would personally stick with an amused tone. Something like:

"Hi, Eliezer here. Yeah, that whole thing was kind of a mess! I over-reacted, everyone else over-reacted to my over-reaction... just urgh. To clear things up, no, I didn't take the whole basilisk thing seriously, but some members did and got upset about it, I got upset, it all got a bit messy. It wasn't my or anyone else's best day, but we all have bad moments on the internet. Sadly the thing about being moderately internet famous is your silly over reactions get captured in carbonite forever! I have done/ written lots of more sensible things since then, which you can check out over at less wrong :)"

Obviously not exactly that, but I think that kind of tone would come across a lot more persuasively than the angry hectoring tone currently adopted whenever this subject comes up.

My response in EY's place would probably be, "I'm a person who had trained himself to take ideas seriously [insert link on Taking Ideas Seriously]. I thought there might be a risk at the time, I acted quickly, and upon further thought it turned out I was wrong and yes, that's fairly embarrassing in hindsight. That's one of the pitfalls of Taking Ideas Seriously - you're more likely to embarrass yourself. But imagine the alternative, where there really is a threat, and people kept quiet because they didn't want to be embarrassed. From that perspective,... (read more)

8Brillyant12y

In his defense, is it possible EY can't win at this point, regardless of his approach? Maybe the internet has grabbed this thing and the PR whirlwinds are going to do with it whatever they like? I've read apologies from EY where he seems to admit pretty clearly he screwed up. He comes off as defensive and pissy sometimes in my opinion, but he seems sincerely irked about how RW and other outlets have twisted to whole story to discredit LW and himself. From my recall, one comment he made on the reddit sub dedicated to his HP fanfic indicated he was very hurt by the whole kerfuffle, in addition to his obvious frustration.

6FiftyTwo12y

Yeah that would be a much better response. Or alternatively get someone who is more suited to PR to deal with this sort of thing

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xkcd on the AI box experiment

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xkcd on the AI box experiment

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