[scarmig]

Imagine we found an asteroid hurtling toward the Earth and would hit it with a 50% probability a decade from now, wiping out all of humanity. Is it worth spending trillions of dollars prioritizing stopping that, at the cost of lives that could be saved today by using those same funds?

[eschaton]

Yes, because—accepting your premise—it’s an actual thing that was observed with a realistically-assigned probability by experts in the appropriate fields.

The AI singularity that Yudkowsky cultists worry about is more akin to “What if there’s a 0.0000001% chance there are aliens coming to attack Earth like in Independence Day?”

[drdeca]

Again, no, their claim is not “even if the probability is super low”, but rather, that the probability is substantial.

[scarmig]

You're simply saying that you assign a lower probability to an AI apocalypse than them. Which is fine--so do I--but you seem to be more or less conceding that if they're accurately assigning the probability, they're acting correctly.

[eschaton]

I am mocking assigning any nonzero probability to an AI apocalypse as delusional and based in science fiction rather than science.