Not remotely applicable.
For one, so far everyone predicting doom about AI has been a layman a subject. Maybe you aren't aware, but this is a field that people do PhDs and get professorships in. Noone respected agrees with the doom-sayers.
For one, so far everyone predicting doom about AI has been a layman a subject. Maybe you aren't aware, but this is a field that people do PhDs and get professorships in. Noone respected agrees with the doom-sayers.
This is a myth. It was arguably true 5-10 years ago, but concern with AI safety is not a fringe position even among the highest levels of AI researchers now.
Stuart Russel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_J._Russell) is the co-author of one of the most popular AI textbooks in the world and he has repeatedly said that he thinks the alignment problem is important and that AI presents an existential risk: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602776/yes-we-are-worried... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvmeTaFc_Qw
Marcus Hutter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Hutter) is another respected AI researcher who, along with, Tom Everitt (http://www.tomeveritt.se/) (a researcher at DeepMind, one of the most advanced AI companies in the world), is also working on the alignment problem: http://www.tomeveritt.se/papers/alignment.pdf
You can read through list of grants granted by the Future of Life institute for AI Safety research, almost all of which are to researchers associated with respected universities, not laymen, here: https://futureoflife.org/ai-safety-research/
I'm aware of my own existence, thanks ;-)
> Noone respected agrees with the doom-sayers
But many, many, many respected AI researchers (who I've talked to about this) certainly do agree that AI/ML safety/robustness are important topics of inquiry.
Including researchers at all the top CS departments, at Deepmind, at OpenAI, etc.
Consider critiquing the concrete projects that are funded with AI safety money. Very little of that money flows to research about "preventing malicious superintelligence" or whatever strawman you have in mind. And even projects that consider those questions also consider many much more near-term AI safety questions.
> Consider critiquing the concrete projects that are funded with AI safety money. Very little of that money flows to research about "preventing malicious superintelligence" or whatever strawman you have in mind. And even projects that consider those questions also consider many much more near-term AI safety questions.
But this ("preventing malicious superintelligence") is EXACTLY what we are talking about. The comment in the OP was quoting the following
> Grants will likely go to organizations that seek to reduce global catastrophic risks, especially those relating to advanced artificial intelligence.