"Consistently wrong" seems a bit much. Seems like being directionally right early that AI would be a Big Deal and scary should count for something? It doesn't mean any details or other predictions are right, though.
Only if it was an uncommon prediction; otherwise, it’s just evidence of common sense.
IMO they have been consistently too aggressive on timelines. When GPT-4 came out, Yudkowsky said it might be conscious. I think he has written interesting stuff but let's be real
I don't expect GPT-4 to be conscious, it would be quite remarkable if we've stumbled upon whatever evolution did that made us conscious.
But how would you even tell, given we don't know the mechanism or physical process that un-thinking and un-planning natural selection happened to stumble upon to give it to us?
Stories about golems going rogue and genies requiring careful wishing aren’t modern era inventions.
It was a topic in less-mainstream sci-fi well before that. And some more mainstream stuff like Star Trek TOS.
Frankly it seems more common than not in the last 40 years. I don't really remember a big wave of claims "Terminator is silly, no sort of AI could ever be malevolent!"
We've even had the dichotomy of some Doctor Who episodes where the self-driving car crashes itself to kill the occupant to silence them, against repeated real-life news stories about self-driving cars killing people, and yet the connection isn't getting made that software controls hardware.
If I scream that a vicious beast is going to destroy the world, I don't get credit for being 'directionally right' if a squirrel eats a hazelnut. AI being a big deal is a long, long way from the full beliefs Yudkowksy promotes, and there are many people who predicted AI's significance who didn't also believe it would be an extinction event.
It’s more he screamed that bacteria is gonna do evolution faster than any before it and turn into a beast that destroys the world, and now that bacteria has turned into a squirrel so far. He’s been very right so far and if that squirrel keeps sizing up you’d want to give him credit.
Just recently AI became “powerful enough” to warrant export controls from the US and maybe soon China.
Someone makes a made up claim, second party acts on made up claim, third party takes second party’s actions a proof of claim.
Reminds me of the “they’re eating pets” thing a bit.
Like are you saying that AI is still kinda not a powerful tool and unlikely to become geopolitically relevant etc? I don’t know how to relate this to culture war media frenzies which is rather stay out of.