[pclmulqdq]

That is transparently what this letter is for most of its signatories. They lost the race (in one way or another) and they want time to catch back up. This is as true for the academics who made big contributions in the past but missed out on the latest stuff as it is for Elon Musk.

[nineteen999]

The joke will be on them when our open-source powered mechwarriors made of bulldozer parts come for them.

[TeMPOraL]

The joke will be on us all when your open-source powered mechwarriors start destroying dams and power plants and even take a stab at launching some nukes, because the models figured this is the most effective way to "get them", and weren't aligned enough to see why they should take a different approach.

[nineteen999]

While my tongue was firmly in my cheek, and still is somewhat, whats to stop (for example) Boston Dynamics and OpenAI collaborating and beating us to your nightmare scenario first? And is that a situation you would prefer?

[TeMPOraL]

Of course not. I'm leaning towards Yudkowsky's recommendation, which is to put a pause on all of it.

[pclmulqdq]

I have a bridge to sell Yudkowsky and everyone else who believes that an "AI pause" is actually something that can happen.

Global treaties pretty much all occur with implied threats of violence, and we don't have enough guns to force this across India, China, the middle east, the EU, and the US. Major AI development happens in all of those places.

[TeMPOraL]

You're reading this wrong. Yudkowsky isn't saying that this will happen; in fact, it's apparent to him as much as to everyone else how unlikely is that.

Yudkowsky's point is that this is the minimum and least difficult thing we need to do. LeCun and others on both sides of the "AI regulation" argument are busy arguing the color of the carpet, while the whole house is on fire.

[dragonwriter]

Lots of people recommend a pause, Yudkowsky explicitly argues that a pause is entirely inadequate and recommends an extreme anti-AI-research global crusade, so its kind of odd to point to him the way you have as a pause-recommender.