Fool's Expertise

I listened to the recent Ezra Klein interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, which seems to be something of a Rorschach test for AI doomerism: if you are inclined to see doom, Jensen sounds dismissive, but if you (like me) do not fear for the future of humanity at the (metaphorical!) hands of a computer program, Jensen’s responses seem very reasonable. (With some exception: does this guy really not know his own zip code?!) But I also think there was a lost opportunity. While Jensen rightfully indicates that existing regulation (e.g., product liability laws) can act to hold the frontier labs accountable for harms caused by their own products (a point made more thoroughly by former FTC chair Lina Khan), he didn’t challenge Klein enough. In particular, Klein repeatedly appealed to the authority conferred by AI expertise; how could Jensen disagree with pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton? While Jensen (rightfully) pointed out Hinton has been wrong in his predictions (e.g., his infamously wrong…