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Comment by shrimpx | Hacker News Reader

The crazy thing is people at large didn’t know anything about “AI safety” until these very companies started peddling the concept in the political sphere and media. The very companies who were doing the opposite of this concept they advertised so much and whose importance they stressed much.

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"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

Or talk of the laws of robotics.

I think that people know plenty.

The crazier thing is that most advocates of "AI safety" don't know anything about "AI safety". By and large the term is marketing with very little objective scientific development.

It is essentially a series of op-ed pieces from vested interests masquerading as a legitimate field of inquiry

That is not correct. AI safety is a subject on which serious books have been written, serious scientists have published research, and serious organizations have spent tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars on researching it. Who are you who to say "advocated don't know anything about AI safety"?

Serious scholarly work went into analyzing the degree of omnipotence of the Christian God. Does that imply we actually have a true understanding of the Devine, its intentions and abilities (or even its existence)?

Are there any serious books written on the "prevent catastrophe" definition of AI safety written by people like Hinton or Sutskever? (Not necessarily them specifically, but people with technical chops rather than people whose "game" is philosophic speculation like Yudkowski or Bostrom.)

It might be better to ask the inverse. Which "AI Safety" experts are worth listening too. I have found very few, and the ones that I've found worth listening to are much more concerned about practical issues that impact systems today, as opposed to the ones that are just author fiction.

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