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Ben Recht's avatar

Jasmine, I have so many thoughts about this, I almost feel compelled to blog about it. Probably the thing that annoys me most is the "skeptics" crowd is so underrepresented in this debate. I'm an AGI skeptic and disagree with almost everything Arvind, Sayash, and Francois write.

For now, I wanted to share my AGI reading list that I made in 2019. Despite the half decade of impressive chatbot results, all of them hold up remarkably well and explain the *mindset* of your AGI bro on the street.

Ted Chiang's critique of the threat of superintelligence.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-danger-to-civilization-isnt-ai-its-runaway

Maciej Cegłowski's Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People.

https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm

Stephanie Dick’s history of our conceptions of artificial vs natural intelligence.

https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/0aytgrau/release/3

David Leslie's scathing review of Stuart Russell's book.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02939-0

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Chris L's avatar

There are different language games going on here.

One language game is aspirational or teological. It's about taking a zoomed out view and asking where we want to go or where things will inevitably end up (assuming no prior catastrophe).

Another language game is contrastive, where people first consider the capacities that humans possess, but current AI systems lack, and then select the one they consider most important.

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