This week, Daniel Kokotajlo, the AI researcher leading the AI Futures Project, appeared on the highly popular YouTube channel The Diary of a CEO. For two hours, he spoke with host Steven Bartlett about AI 2040, his team’s new scenario that we’ve already covered several times.
“The core problem is that people aren’t taking it seriously yet,” says the former OpenAI governance researcher, using his two hours in a friendly space to present his warnings to a wide audience. Bartlett makes a noticeable effort to give Kokotajlo the moral weight he deserves. He explicitly mentions the $2 million in equity that Kokotajlo was prepared to walk away from because he refused to sign OpenAI’s anti-disparagement clause, which would have prohibited him from criticizing the company after he left.
Kokotajlo sees a 70% chance of a catastrophic outcome from current AI developments, and he seems able to convey the gravity of the situation. In a particularly striking moment, Bartlett speaks with Kokotajlo about the personal consequences he draws from his predictions. When Kokotajlo describes how carefully he and his wife have weighed whether to have children because of his shortened timelines, Bartlett calls it “chilling” — an assessment he repeats several times.
In his closing message, Kokotajlo warns against dismissing the dangers of artificial intelligence simply because they sound like science fiction.
You’re going to hear a lot of things and you already have been hearing a lot of things about AI and it’s going to sound like science fiction. But sometimes things which sound like science fiction happen in reality. And in fact, many times, historically, things that used to be science fiction have then become reality.
Of course he is right about that. Not too long ago, AI itself was still science fiction. And just because H. G. Wells first conceived of “atom bombs” in a 1914 novel doesn’t mean the danger posed by nuclear weapons was any less real a few decades later.
All in all, Kokotajlo managed to convey both how dire the situation is and that there’s still hope.
BARTLETT: Do you think it’s too late?
KOKOTAJLO: No, I don’t think it’s too late.
KOKOTAJLO: If I thought it was too late, I wouldn’t be here.
BARTLETT: Where would you be?
KOKOTAJLO: With my family.
My colleague Mitch wrote last month, that some disasters are built one excuse and one rationalization at a time. Hopefully we can also achieve prevention one chilling conversation at a time.
The analyses and opinions expressed on AI StopWatch reflect the views of the individual contributors and the sources they cover, and should not be taken as official positions of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.