TED talk by Eliezer Yudkowsky: Unleashing the Power of Artificial Intelligence

This is much better than any of his other speaking appearances. The short format, and TED's excellent talk editing/coaching, have really helped.

This is still terrible.

I thought it was a TEDx talk, and I thought it was perhaps the worst TEDx talk I've seen. (I agree that it's rare to see a TEDx talk with good content, but the deliveries are usually vastly better than this).

I love Eliezer Yudkowsky. He is the reason I'm in this field, and I think he's one of the smartest human beings alive. He is also one of the best-intentioned people I know. This is not a critique of Yudkowsky as an individual.

He is not a good public speaker.

I'm afraid having him as the public face of the movement is going to be devastating. The reactions I see to his public statements indicate that he is creating polarization. His approach makes people want to find reasons to disagree with him. And individuals motivated to do that will follow their confirmation bias to focus on counterarguments.

I realize that he had only a few days to prepare this. That is not the problem. The problem is a lack of public communication skills. Those are very different than communicating with your in-group.

Yudkowsky should either level up his skills, rapidly, or step aside.

There are many others with more talent and skills for this type of communication.

Eliezer is rapidly creating polarization around this issue, and that is very difficult to undo. We don't have time to do that.

Could we bull through with this approach, and rely on the strength of the arguments to win over public opinion? That might work. But doing that instead of actually thinking about strategy and developing skills would hurt our odds of survival, perhaps rather badly.

I've been afraid to say this in this community. I think it needs to be said.

This was a TED talk, not one of those TEDx talks. A random TEDx account posted this early, Yud doesn't know why. We might have needed to wait months for the official TED talk to be posted, since TED likes to have a constant stream of videos (even if the speakers would rather release immediately), and then this account undercut that process.

This is really unfortunate, since lots of people are going to look at this and think it's a TEDx talk instead of a TED talk. Every TEDx talk I've ever seen was garbage, and it seems like they're below Yud's standards and he wouldn't give one if offered.

Note that, while the linked post on the TEDx YouTube channel was taken down, there's a mirror available at: https://files.catbox.moe/qdwops.mp4.

I wouldn't recommend watching this talk to someone unfamiliar with the AI risk arguments, and I think promoting it would be a mistake. Yudkowsky seemed better on Lex Friedman's podcast. A few more Rational Animations-style AI risk YouTube videos would be more effective.

"Squiggle Maximizer" and "Paperclip Maximizer" have to go. They're misleading terms for the orthogonal AI utility function that make the concept seem like a joke when communicating with the general public. Better to use a different term, preferably something that represents a goal that's valuable to humans. All funny-sounding insider jargon should be avoided cough notkilleveryoneism cough.

Nanotech is too science-fictiony and distracting. More realistic near-term scenarios (hacks of nuclear facilities like Stuxnet to control energy, out-of-control trading causing world economies to crash and leading to a full-on nuclear war, large-scale environmental disaster that's lethal to humans but not machines, gain-of-function virus engineering, controlling important people through blackmail) would resonate better and emphasize the fragility of human civilization.

The chess analogy ("you will lose but I can't tell you exactly how") is effective. It's also challenging to illustrate to people how something can be significantly more intelligent than them, and this analogy simultaneously helps convey that by reminding people how they easily lose to computers.

It's unfortunate that this version is spreading because many people will think it's a low credibility TEDx talk instead of a very credible main stage TED talk.

I’m curious about the circumstances of this talk. What prompted the organisers to ask Eliezer to do it, and in such haste? (He has tweeted that he had only a few days to write it.) Who was the audience (of people in the room) and the intended audience (for the video)? Why is it embargoed, and why was it prematurely published? Was it intended to be just a rehearsal?

The occasional nervous titters from the audience put me in mind of Max Frisch’s 1953 play “The Fire Raisers”, and the more recent film “Don’t Look Up”.

I was somewhat disturbed by the enthusiastic audience applause to dire serious warnings. What are techniques or ways to anchor conversations like this to keep them more serious?

As a note for Yudkowsky if he ever sees this and cares about the random gut feelings of strangers: after seeing this, I suspect the authoritative, stern strong leader tone of speaking will be much more effective than current approaches.

EDIT: missed a word

Correction: this is TEDx - a more local less official version of TED Apparently, it's TED, I only looked at the channel name, sorry for confusion

For reasons I can't remember (random Amazon recommendation?) I read Life 3.0 five years ago, and I've been listening to podcasts about AI alignment ever since. I work with education at a national level, and this January I wrote and published a book "AI in Education" to help teachers use ChatGPT in a sensible way – and, in its own chapter, make more people aware of the risks with AI. I've been giving a lot of talks about AI and education since then, and I end each presentation with some words about AI risks. I am sure that most people reading the book or listening to my talks don't care about existential risk from AI, or simply don't get it. But I'm also sure that there are people who are made more aware.

I believe that reaching out to specific groups of people (such as teachers) is a good complement to creating a public debate about (existential) AI risks. It is fairly easy to get people interested in a book or a talk about using ChatGPT in their profession, and adding a section on AI risks is a good way of reaching the fraction of the audience who can grasp and work with the risks.

All this being said, I also want to say that I am not convinced that AGI is immanent, or that AGI necessarily means apocalypse. But I am sufficiently convinced about AI posing real and serious risks – also today – that the risks must get much more attention than they get today. I also believe that this attitude has a better chance of getting an audience than a doomsayer attitude, but I think it's a bad idea to use a particular attitude as a make up to get a message across – better is for everyone to be sincere (perhaps combined with selecting public voices partly based on how well the voices can get across).

Concerning this TED Talk: It seems to me that Eliezer has run too far on his track to be able to get across to those who are new to existential AI risk. He is (obviously) quite worried, on the verge of despairing. The we (as the society) are dealing with AI risk must seem like a bad comedy to him – but a comedy where everyone dies. For real. It is difficult to get your message out when feeling like that. I think his strongest part of the presentation was when he sounded sincerely angry.

(Side note: I think the interview with Eliezer that Lex Fridman made was good, so I don't agree that Eliezer isn't a good public communicator.)

I can't access the YouTube link or find the video on TED's website. Has the talk been removed? Does someone know what's going on?