The Education of a Doomer

If you follow me on Twitter, or read this blog, you have noticed that I went from being generally optimistic and excited about AI to being extremely concerned. And I thought, I should explain why I changed my mind. Each section of this post is about some aspect of AI where my views shifted. I begin each section by explaining my previous beliefs, and why I held them, and then explain why those beliefs changed. Contents Economics Alignment Control Writing Software Engineering Deferring to AI Stagnation Economics Automation has been good. We’ve automated 99% of the jobs people did in 1790, and the result is not mass unemployment, rather, we are wealthier, healthier, more educated, we have more leisure, etc. I had this vague, inductive idea that, while I can’t predict what jobs will exist after AGI, there will be demand for me to do something. If nothing else, the much higher economic growth of the post-AGI world means that the human niche, while small in absolute terms, might be much…