A Response to Yudkowsky and Soares's AGI Safety Book from an Early AGI Developer
By
danans
Baker's choice. Dense with flavour, light on filler.
Summary
The article is a response to Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares's book "If anybody builds it everyone dies," written by someone who has known Yudkowsky since the late 1990s and was involved in AGI development at Webmind Inc. The author recounts Yudkowsky's 2000 visit to their AI company, where Yudkowsky tried to convince them to slow down AGI development and focus on safety and ethics. The piece appears to be a critique of the "everyone dies" narrative around AGI, offering a perspective from someone with firsthand experience in AGI development who has engaged with Yudkowsky's safety concerns for decades.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledI've known Eliezer Yudkowsky since the late 1990s.
In 2000, he visited my AI company Webmind Inc. in New York City, where we were explicitly trying to build AGI alongside various commercial applications.
His mission? To convince us to maybe stop. Or, failing that, to get us thinking really hard about AGI safety and how to make the AGI good for everyone.
While he was encouraging us to slow down and work on ethics instead of building AGI...
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