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Capla comments on Stupid Questions May 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Gondolinian 01 May 2015 05:28PM

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Comment author: Gondolinian 01 May 2015 06:04:30PM 13 points [-]

There is a not necessarily large, but definitely significant chance that developing machine intelligence compatible with human values may very well be the single most important thing that humans have or will ever do, and it seems very likely that economic forces will make strong machine intelligence happen soon, even if we're not ready for it.

So I have two questions about this: firstly, and this is probably my youthful inexperience talking (a big part of why I'm posting this here), but I see so many rationalists do so much awesome work on things like social justice, social work, medicine, and all kinds of poverty-focused effective altruism, but how can it be that the ultimate fate of humanity to either thrive beyond imagination or perish utterly may rest on our actions in this century, and yet people who recognize this possibility don't do everything they can to make it go the way we need it to? This sort of segues in to my second question, which is what is the most any person, more specifically, I can do for FAI? I'm still in high school, so there really isn't that much keeping me from devoting my life to helping the cause of making sure AI is friendly. What would that look like? I'm a village idiot by LW standards, and especially bad at math, so I don't think I'd be very useful on the "front lines" so to speak, but perhaps I could try to make a lot of money and do FAI-focused EA? I might be more socially oriented/socially capable than many here, perhaps I could try to raise awareness or lobby for legislation?

Comment author: Capla 06 May 2015 09:12:45PM 1 point [-]

which is what is the most any person, more specifically, I can do for FAI?

First thing you should do is talk to the people that are already involved in this. CFAR seems to be the gateway for man people (at least, it was for me).