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WarImportant9685 t1_j1lr2tx wrote

Reply to comment by Wassux in There are far more dissenting opinions in this sub than people keep saying. by Krillinfor18

I think the correct view is that each technology should be evaluated on its own. And cannot be blanket viewed as good. I'd agree with technology in general is good. But I'd disagree with claims along the line of 'all technological progress is good'. I understand that most people are looking at heuristic reasons why technological progress is good. And I would agree that humanity history is the history of technological progress.

But it's dangerous to say that AGI is good because technology progress is good.

And I kinda disagree with your comments about nuclear weapon. Fact is we are lucky that USA get nuclear weapon first instead of germany. I viewed nuclear weapon as force multiplier instead of good or evil.

And I viewed unaligned AGI as evil. While aligned AGI as force multiplier.

More intuitively, throughout history, we mostly got technology that is still smaller than life. Fire, wheels, masonry, etc. The issue is that right now our tech have started to become larger than life, starting with nuclear and likely larger than the whole humanity with AGI.

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Wassux t1_j1ncrx3 wrote

So you'd rather have world war continue instead of stop by the invention of the nuclear weapon?

And ofcourse each technology should be evaluated on it's own. But I can't think of anything that has been purely negative if you take a heuristic view. Which is the correct way to view it I think.

And yes hypothetically unaligned agi could be bad, but I can't imagine a scenario where that will happen. And that's why I think all technological progress is good, since it is worked on by the brightest minds we have, and they simply haven't dropped the ball yet. And I don't see a reason to expect they will in the future.

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WarImportant9685 t1_j1nfl62 wrote

Frankly, I don't know. Cause nuclear is a grey area tho. In one hand it cause peace on modern times. On the other hand there is always the threat of extinction by nuclear winter.

But let's leave nuclear for a second. I can give you an example of a technological progress where humanity dropped the ball. Usage of CFC refrigerant which damages ozone layer. While it's cool that humanity have banned CFC refrigerant as of now, it takes 20 years for the treaties that banned it (Montreal protocol) to be created from the discovery of the problem.

My point is, humanity is great at advancing tech, but maybe not so much at advancing tech safely. I think at least people should take seriously that aligned AGI is not a guaranteed matter. And instead of getting defensive, ideally more people would want to help alignment research to make sure unaligned AGI not be deployed.

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Wassux t1_j1nzlyl wrote

But isn't the technological advancement there that we figured out that it has a bad effect on the ozone layer?

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WarImportant9685 t1_j1o0t41 wrote

Yes, that's why I don't want to say AGI is bad either. But rather, we need to tread carefully about AGI and consider each possibility. Rather than wholly believe it will be good

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Fe_Ubermens t1_j1mql6c wrote

First sensible r/singularity comment I’ve ever seen lmao

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