[sillysaurusx]

I’ve thought carefully about it for a long time. I still change my mind from time to time, but currently, the view is that we need to own the space before others do.

Suppose you had the option to help discover and design the first nukes. Would it have been better to refuse, and wait for Russia to design them? The early efforts were crucial.

If it were possible to ban AI weapons across all countries for the rest of eternity, I would of course refuse to work on them. But that’s a bit like designing a society with the assumption everyone will be honest.

[misbyrming]

OK, but let's be serious, I don't think anyone's asking you to design AI-powered weapons ("hey, this guy has trained GPT-2, he must have the skillz to design smart cluster munitions!").

So let's see something more realistic. Have you ever, I don't know, stolen your buddy's new bike because if you don't, somebody else will? Or taken an upskirt picture because people do that kind of thing? Or thrown a burger wrapper out a car window because everybody does it? Are there things you simply find disagreeable or repulsive and you won't do them because you simply don't want to?

Or do you really go around in life trying to maximise your asshole potential, just because you assume everyone else will, too? I am genuinely curious because I certainly don't, I try to minimise my asshole potential, first of all because I don't want to be an asshole. I don't care if other people are assholes. The world is full of assholes. But I am me, not them. YMMV.

[noiseman]

There would be no negative consequences for you if you failed to take an upskirt picture. But if a country falls behind in weapons technology, then its very existence is imperilled.

[misbyrming]

On that, please see my point in my second comment above about considering a realistic scenario.

Additionally, I believe that being an asshole is a negative consequence (of one's choices in life?) in and of itself. In a sense, I think it's the worse thing that can possibly happen to a person, to be an asshole.

[noiseman]

I would contest the claim that being an asshole is something that “happens to” a person, rather than something that the person chooses to do.

[misbyrming]

I don't think that anyone ever chooses to be an asshole. I think people realise that they've been assholes, or they don't. I agree that people become assholes through things they do by choice, but I don't think anybody does something only an asshole would with the express purpose of being an asshole.

I'm naive, huh?