[LINK] Cochrane on Existential Risk

Salemicus

The finance professor John Cochrane recently posted an interesting blog post. The piece is about existential risk in the context of global warming, but it is really a discussion of existential risk generally; many of his points are highly relevant to AI risk.

If we [respond strongly to all low-probability threats], we spend 10 times GDP.

It's a interesting case of framing bias. If you worry only about climate, it seems sensible to pay a pretty stiff price to avoid a small uncertain catastrophe. But if you worry about small uncertain catastrophes, you spend all you have and more, and it's not clear that climate is the highest on the list...

All in all, I'm not convinced our political system is ready to do a very good job of prioritizing outsize expenditures on small ambiguous-probability events.

He also points out that the threat from global warming has a negative beta - i.e. higher future growth rates are likely to be associated with greater risk of global warming, but also the richer our descendants will be. This means both that they will be more able to cope with the threat, and that the damage is less important from a utilitarian point of view. Attempting to stop global warming therefore has positive beta, and therefore requires higher rates of return than simple time-discounting.

It strikes me that this argument applies equally to AI risk, as fruitful artificial intelligence research is likely to be associated with higher economic growth. Moreover:

The economic case for cutting carbon emissions now is that by paying a bit now, we will make our descendants better off in 100 years.

Once stated this way, carbon taxes are just an investment. But is investing in carbon reduction the most profitable way to transfer wealth to our descendants? Instead of spending say $1 trillion in carbon abatement costs, why don't we invest $1 trillion in stocks? If the 100 year rate of return on stocks is higher than the 100 year rate of return on carbon abatement -- likely -- they come out better off. With a gazillion dollars or so, they can rebuild Manhattan on higher ground. They can afford whatever carbon capture or geoengineering technology crops up to clean up our messes.

So should we close down MIRI and invest the funds in an index tracker?

The full post can be found here.

If we [respond strongly to all low-probability threats], we spend 10 times GDP.

It's a interesting case of framing bias. If you worry only about climate, it seems sensible to pay a pretty stiff price to avoid a small uncertain catastrophe. But if you worry about small uncertain catastrophes, you spend all you have and more, and it's not clear that climate is the highest on the list...

All in all, I'm not convinced our political system is ready to do a very good job of prioritizing outsize expenditures on small ambiguous-probability events.

It strikes me that this argument applies equally to AI risk, as fruitful artificial intelligence research is likely to be associated with higher economic growth. Moreover:

The economic case for cutting carbon emissions now is that by paying a bit now, we will make our descendants better off in 100 years.

Once stated this way, carbon taxes are just an investment. But is investing in carbon reduction the most profitable way to transfer wealth to our descendants? Instead of spending say $1 trillion in carbon abatement costs, why don't we invest $1 trillion in stocks? If the 100 year rate of return on stocks is higher than the 100 year rate of return on carbon abatement -- likely -- they come out better off. With a gazillion dollars or so, they can rebuild Manhattan on higher ground. They can afford whatever carbon capture or geoengineering technology crops up to clean up our messes.

So should we close down MIRI and invest the funds in an index tracker?

The full post can be found here.

I'm not sure I see any difference between your proposed isomorphic argument and his argument.

Good, then my isomorphism succeeded. Typically, people try to deny that the underlying logic is the same.

the arguments sound exactly as "clever" as each other.

They do? So if you agree that things like car or health or house insurance are irrational, did you run out and cancel every form of insurance you have and advise your family and friends to cancel their insurance too?

I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't seem implausible to me is that if you asked a representative sample of people if climate change protection was important to invest in they would say yes and vote for that. And then if you made the boringly obvious argument about determining where it belongs on the list of important things, they'd also say yes and vote for that.

But note that thinking climate change is a big enough risk to invest against has nothing at all to do with his little argument about 'oh there so so many risks what are we to do we can't consume insurance against them all'. Pointing out that there are a lot of options cannot be an argument against picking a subset of options; here's another version: "this restaurant offers 20 forms of cheesecake for dessert, but if I ordered a slice of 1 then why not order all 20, but then, why I would run out of cash and be arrested and get fat too! So it seems rational to not order any cheesecake at all." Why not just order 1 or 2 of the slices you like best... Arguing about whether you like the strawberry cheesecake better than the chocolate is a completely different argument which has nothing to do with there being 20 possible slices rather than, say, 5.

Good, then my isomorphism succeeded. Typically, people try to deny that the underlying logic is the same. Not in the way I think you think. They do? So if you agree that things like car or health or house insurance are irrational, did you run out and cancel every form of insurance you have and advise your family and friends to cancel their insurance too?

No, because we can quantify the risks and costs of those things and make good decisions about their worth.

In other words, if I assume that you intended that, for the sake of your argument, that we have t... (read more)

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[LINK] Cochrane on Existential Risk

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[LINK] Cochrane on Existential Risk

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