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KatjaGrace comments on Superintelligence Reading Group 2: Forecasting AI - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: KatjaGrace 23 September 2014 01:00AM

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Tags: superintelligence-reading-group futurism ai

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Comment author: KatjaGrace 28 September 2014 06:28:32PM *  3 points [-]

To be clear, you are saying that a thing will seem frivolous if it does have a relevant franchise, but hasn't happened in real life?

Some other technological topics that hadn't happened in real life when people became concerned about them:

  • Nuclear weapons, had The World Set Free, though I'm not sure how well known it was (may have been seen as frivolous by most at first - I'm not sure, but by the time there were serious projects to build them I think not)
  • Extreme effects from climate change, e.g. massive sea level rise, freezing of Northern Europe, no particular popular culture franchise (not very frivolous)
  • Recombinant DNA technology, the public's concern was somewhat motivated by The Andromeda Strain) (not frivolous I think).

Evidence seems mixed.

Comment author: kgalias 29 September 2014 11:11:53PM 1 point [-]

To be clear, you are saying that a thing will seem frivolous if it does have a relevant franchise, but hasn't happened in real life?

Yes, that was my (tentative) claim.

We would need to know whether the examples were seen as frivolous after they came into being, but before the technology started being used.

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