The important thing for alignment work isn't the median prediction; if we had an alignment solution just by then, we'd have a 50% chance of dying from that lack.

I think the biggest takeaway is that nobody has a very precise and reliable prediction, so if we want to have good alignment plans in advance of AGI, we'd better get cracking.

I think Daniel's estimate does include a pretty specific and plausible model of a path to AGI, so I take his the most seriously. My model of possible AGI architectures requires even less compute than his, but I think the Hofstadter principle applies to AGI development if not compute progress.

Estimates in the absence of gears-level models of AGI seem much more uncertain, which might be why Ajeya and Ege's have much wider distributions.

My take is that this does need to be addressed, but it should be done very carefully so as not to make the dynamic worse.

I have many post drafts on this topic. I haven't published any because I'm very much afraid of making the tribal conflict worse, or of being ostracized from one or both tribes.

Here's an off-the-cuff attempt to address the dynamics without pointing any fingers or even naming names. It might be too abstract to serve the purposes you have in mind, but hopefully it's at least relevant to the issue.

I think it's wise (or even crucial) to be quite careful, polite, and generous when addressing views you disagree with on alignment. Failing to do so runs a large risk that your arguments will backfire and delay converging on the truth of crucial matters. Strongly worded arguments can engage emotions and ideological affiliations.  The field of alignment may not have the leeway for internal conflict distorting our beliefs and distracting us from making rapid progress.

I do think it would be useful to address those tribal-ish dynamics, because I think they're not just distorting the discussions, they're distorting our individual epistemics. I think motivated reasoning is a powerful force, in conjunction with cognitive limitations that limit us from weighing all evidence and arguments in complex domains.

I'm less worried about naming the groups than I am about causing more logic-distorting, emotional reactions by speaking ill of dearly-held beliefs, arguments, and hopes. When naming the group dynamics, it might be helpful to stress individual variations, e.g. "individuals with more of the empiricist(theorist) outlook"

In most of society, arguments don't do much to change beliefs. It's better in more logical/rational/empirically leaning subcultures like LessWrong, but we shouldn't assume we're immune to emotions distorting our reasoning. Forceful arguments are often implicitly oppositional, confrontational, and insulting, and so have blowback effects that can entrench existing views and ignite tribal conflicts.

Science gets past this on average, given enough time. But the aphorism "science progresses one funeral at a time" should be chilling in this field. 

We probably don't have that long to solve alignment, so we've got to do better than traditional science.  The alignment community is much more aware of and concerned with communication and emotional dynamics than the field I emigrated from, and probably from most other sciences. So I think we can do much better if we try.

Steve Byrnes' Valence sequence is not directly about tribal dynamics, but it is indirectly quite relevant. It's about the psychological mechanisms that tie idea, arguments, and group identities to emotional responses (it focuses on valence but the same steering system mechanisms apply to other specific emotional responses as well).   It's not a quick read, but it's a fascinating lens for analyzing why we believe what we do.

Those links were both incredibly useful, thank you! The Rogue Replication timeline is very similar in thrust to the post I was working on when I saw this, but worked out in detail and well-written and thoroughly researched. Your proposed mechanism probably should not be deployed; I agree with the conclusion that rogue replication (or other obviously misaligned AI) is probably useful in elevating public concern about AI alignment as a risk.

See also Inscrutability was always inevitable, right? 

Yes. But because we're discussing a scenario in which the world is ready to slow down or shut down AGI research, I'm assuming those steps have been crossed.

The biggest step IMO, "alignment is hard" doesn't intervene between taking ASI seriously and thinking it could prevent you from dying of natural causes.

It seems to me that believing ASI can kill you and believing ASI can save you are both pretty directly downstream of believing in ASI at all. Since the premise is that everyone believes pretty strongly in the possibility of doom, it seems they'd mostly get there by believing in ASI and would mostly also believe in the upside potentials too.

I thought I was addressing the premise of your post: the world is ready to do serious restrictions on AI research: do they do shutdown or controlled takeoff?

I guess maybe I'm missing what's important about the physical consolidation vs other methods of inspection and enforcement.

I think my scenario conforms to all of the gears you mention. It could be seen as adding another gear: the incentives/psychologies of government decision-makers.

I agree that governments aren't coming anywhere close to making this calculation at this point. I mean they very well might once they've actually thought about the issue. I think it will depend a lot on their collective distribution of p(doom). I'd think they'd push ahead if they could convince themselves it was lower than maybe 20% or thereabouts. I'd love to be convinced they would be more cautious.

Of course I think it very much depends on who is in the relevant governments at that time. I think that the issue could play a large role in elections, and that might help a lot.

The scenario I'm thinking of mostly is the overt version, which is controlled takeoff. A few governments pursue controlled takeoff projects. This is hopefully done in the open and relatively collaboratively across US and Chinese teams. I'd assume they'd recruit from existing teams, effectively consolidating labs under government control. I'd hope that the Western and Chinese teams would agree to share their results on capabilities as well as alignment, although of course they'd worry about defection on that, too.

If they did it covertly that would be defecting. I haven't thought about that scenario as much.

This scenario doesn't seem like it would require consolidating GPUs, just monitoring their usage to some degree. It seems like it would be a lot easier to not make that part of the treaty.

Good points; I agree with all of them.

It's hard to know how to weigh them.

My mental model does include those gradients even though I expressed them as categories.

I currently think it's all too likely that decision-makers would accept a 20% or more chance of extinction in exchange for the benefits.

One route is to make better guesses about what happens by default. The other is to try to create better decisions by spreading the relevant logic.

Those who want to gamble will certainly push the "it should be fine and we need to do it!" logic. The two sets of beliefs will probably develop symbiotically. It's hard to separate emotional from rational reasons for beliefs.

It looks to me like people automatically convince themselves that what they want to do emotionally is also the logical thing to do. See Motivated reasoning/confirmation bias as the most important cognitive bias for a brief discussion.

Based on that logic, I actually think human cognitive biases and cognitive limitations are the biggest challenge to surviving ASI. We're silly creatures with a spark of reason.