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fburnaby comments on Climate change: existential risk? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think climate change, coupled with different war-over-resources type scenarios imply non-negligible existential risk. The most compelling argument I'm aware of for switching from environmental science (or military tech/strategy/intelligence, since those also impact the existential risk associated with climate change) is the marginal utility argument -- FAI research is so much smaller, making the relative contribution of one person so much larger (assuming you believe the law of diminishing returns should be applied to AI research and climate change).
This is a big issue, there's a lot of bright young people doing the equivalent of cleaning oil off seabirds because they feel they gotta do something about environmental risk. On the other hand, theres a lot of greens arguing against nuclear power and for growing tomatoes in greenhouses to save on aviation fuel, so maybe there isn't enough brainpower being dedicated to the topic....
Anyway the flipside of marginal utility here is comparative advantage: what skills do you have that can help with AI research?