MichaelA

In The Precipice, Toby Ord writes: > we need to remember how quickly new technologies can be upon us, and to be wary of assertions that they are either impossible or so distant in time that we have no cause for concern. Confident denouncements by eminent scientists should certainly give us reason to be sceptical of a technology, but not to bet our lives against it - their track record just isn’t good enough for that. I strongly agree with those claims, think they’re very important in relation to estimating existential risk,[1] and appreciate the nuanced way in which they’re stated. (There’s also a lot more nuance around this passage which I haven’t quoted.) I also largely agree with similar claims made in Eliezer Yudkowsky’s earlier essay There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence. But both Ord and Yudkowsky provide the same set of three specific historical cases as evidence of the poor track record of such “confident denouncements”. And I think those cases provide less clear evidence than those authors seem to suggest. So in this post, I’ll: * Quote Ord and/or Yudkowsky’s descriptions of those three cases, as well as one case mentioned by Yudkowsky but not Ord * Highlight ways in which those cases may be murkier than Ord and Yudkowsky suggest * Discuss how much we could conclude about technology forecasting in general from such a small and likely unrepresentative sample of cases, even if those cases weren’t murky I should note that I don’t think that these historical cases are necessary to support claims like those Ord and Yudkowsky make. And I suspect there might be better evidence for those claims out there. But those cases were the main evidence Ord provided, and among the main evidence Yudkowsky provided. So those cases are being used as key planks supporting beliefs that are important to many EAs and longtermists. Thus, it seems healthy to prod at each suspicious plank on its own terms, and update incrementally. Case: Rutherford and at