Max Hodak - Artificial intelligence will be here soon
Over the last few years I have gone from an AGI skeptic to being significantly worried about just how soon it will likely come to exist and how dramatically it will reshape the world. Like climate change, it is a challenging problem in part due to a widespread reluctance to even recognize it as a tangible issue, and then when it is it’s unclear what can or should be done. I want to start by describing the thought process that led to my “conversion,” and then I have some thoughts on why I think neural engineering is really our only option for addressing it. Around 200,000 years ago, humans were a relatively undifferentiated primate living on the African savannah. Earth’s fauna were diverse and thriving across a range of ecosystems. Today, humans absolutely dominate the planet, and we keep our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, in glass boxes for our entertainment while their natural population has declined by about 80% since 1900 and is now restricted to a small swath of protected t