The Importance of Argumentation in AI Arguments

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I find that often people who dismiss potential risks from AI, their arguments seem really weak in the way they dismiss it. And of course, that doesn't mean they're wrong, right? Like, no matter how weak in someone's argument is, doesn't imply there isn't a strong argument to be made. If you are arguing against people who are as good at arguing as you are, then I think that arguing with people and seeing if they have more persuasive arguments than you is reasonably good at allowing you to come to true beliefs.

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How hard is it to arrive at true beliefs about the world? How can you find enjoyment in being wrong? When presenting claims that will be scrutinized by others, is it better to hedge and pad the claims in lots of caveats and uncertainty, or to strive for a tone that matches (or perhaps even exaggerates) the intensity with which you hold your beliefs? Why should you maybe focus on drilling small skills when learning a new skill set? What counts as a "simple" question? How can you tell when you actually understand something and when you don't? What is "cargo culting"? Which features of AI are likely in the future to become existential threats? What are the hardest parts of AI research? What skills will we probably really wish we had on the eve of deploying superintelligent AIs?

Buck Shlegeris is the CTO of Redwood Research, an independent AI alignment research organization. He currently leads their interpretability research. He previously worked on research and outreach at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. His website is shlegeris.com.

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