Jul 29, 2021
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-acemoglu-onoh-god-were-doing
The Washington Post has published yet another "luminary in unrelated field discovers AI risk, pronounces it stupid" article. This time it's Daron Acemoglu. I respect Daron Acemoglu and appreciate the many things his work has revealed about economics. In particular, I respect him so much that I wish he would stop embarrassing himself by writing this kind of article (I feel the same way about Steven Pinker and Ted Chiang).
In service of this goal, I want to discuss the piece briefly. I’ll start with what I think is its main flaw, then nitpick a few other things:
1: The Main Flaw: “AI Is Dangerous Now, So It Can’t Be Dangerous Later"
This is the basic structure around which this article is
written. It goes:
1. Some people say that AI might be dangerous in the future.
2. But AI is dangerous now!
3. So it can’t possibly be dangerous in the future.
4. QED!
I have no idea why Daron Acemoglu and every single other person who writes articles on AI for the popular media thinks this is such a knockdown argument. But here we are. He writes:
AI detractors have focused on the potential danger to human civilization from a super-intelligence if it were to run amok. Such warnings have been sounded by tech entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Elon Musk, physicist Stephen Hawking and leading AI researcher Stuart Russell.