Also, Kurtzweil had some highly selling books out a long time ago.
Yes, but with a quite different message.
I came across Bostrom a decade ago. I'm sure his book is great but 'Bostrom writes a book' isn't that different from 'Bostrom has a website'.
No, it's quite different.
I don't think Bill Gates would have made those claims when it wasn't for Bostrom's book. Bill Gates also promotes the book to other people. Bill Gates likely wouldn't tell important people: "Go read up on Bostroms website how we should think about AGI risk", the way he does it with the book.
Elon Musk is a busy guy with 80 hour workweeks. Bostrom and FHI made to him the case that UFAI risk is important. Personal conversations were likely important but reading Bostrom's book helped raise the importance of the issue in Elon's mind.
Oh, so Bostrom was behind these three people? Then his book is more important than I thought.
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