Would you have a baby in 2024?

+ the obvious fact that it might matter to the kid that they're going to die

(edit: fwiw I broadly think people who want to have kids should have kids)

I agree that it's bad to raise a child in an environment of extreme anxiety. Don't do that.

Also try to avoid being very doomy and anxious in general, it's not a healthy state to be in. (Easier said than done, I realize.)

I don't agree with that. I'm a parent of a 4-year-old who takes AI risk seriously. I think childhood is great in and of itself, and if the fate of my kid is to live until 20 and then experience some unthinkable AI apocalypse, that was 20 more good years of life than he would have had if I didn't do anything. If that's the deal of life it's a pretty good deal and I don't think there's any reason to be particularly anguished about it on your kid's behalf.

This argument works against any thing you could do besides AI work and thus has to be considered in that wider frame. Going to the gym does mean less time for AI go well. Building a house. Watching Netflix. Some of these are longer time investments and some shorter, but the question still remains. Answer the question first how much effort you want to invest into AI go well vs. all other things you can do and then consider the fraction for children.

Perhaps people who can't contribute to AI alignment directly could help indirectly by providing free babysitting for the people working on AI alignment?

Heh, that's why I put "strong" in there!

Did you take such things into account when you made the decision, or decisions?

My anecdotal evidence from relatives with toddlers is that the first few years of having your first child is indeed the most stressful experience of your life. I barely even meet them anymore, because all their free time is eaten by childcare. Not sure about happiness, but people who openly admit to regretting having their kids face huge social stigma, and I doubt you could get honest answer on that question.

The post is phrased as "do you think it's a good idea to have kids given timelines?". I've said why I'm not convinced timelines should be relevant to having kids. I think if people are getting their views by copying Eliezer Yudkowsky and copying people who copy his views (which I'm not sure if OP is doing) then they should get better epistemology.

From 2018, AI timelines section of mediangroup.org/research.

Modeling AI progress through insights

We assembled a list of major technical insights in the history of progress in AI and metadata on the discoverer(s) of each insight.

Based on this dataset, we developed an interactive model that calculates the time it would take to reach the cumulation of all AI research, based on a guess at what percentage of AI discoveries have been made.

AI Insights dataset: data (json file), schema

Feasibility of Training an AGI using Deep Reinforcement Learning: A Very Rough Estimate

Several months ago, we were presented with a scenario for how artificial general intelligence (AGI) may be achieved in the near future. We found the approach surprising, so we attempted to produce a rough model to investigate its feasibility. The document presents the model and its conclusions.

The usual cliches about the folly of trying to predict the future go without saying and this shouldn't be treated as a rigorous estimate, but hopefully it can give a loose, rough sense of some of the relevant quantities involved. The notebook and the data used for it can be found in the Median Group numbers GitHub repo if the reader is interested in using different quantities or changing the structure of the model.

[Download PDF](http://mediangroup.org/docs/Feasibility of Training an AGI using Deep Reinforcement Learning, A Very Rough Estimate.pdf)

(note: second has a hard-to-estimate "real life vs alphago" difficulty parameter that the result is somewhat dependent on, although this parameter can be adjusted in the model)

I recommend articles (not by me) Why I am not an AI doomer, Diminishing Returns in Machine Learning.

Plenty of grown ups of average or even above average intelligence assume that 99.9% effective contraception means they'll never be in the .01% statistic.

If you've had the "if the highly effective redundant contraception fails, should we abort?" conversation before getting any sperm anywhere near any eggs with every partner you've ever had, I'd posit that you're in a slim minority of humanity.

And no human, no matter how rational, can predict with perfect accuracy what their emotional response will be to experiencing a physiological event that is completely novel to them.

Strong disagree.  Probably what you say applies to the case of a couple that cares sufficiently to use several birth control methods, and that has no obstruction to using some methods (e.g., bad reactions to birth-control pills).

Using only condoms, which from memory was the advice I got as a high-schooler in Western Europe twenty years ago, seems to have a 3% failure rate (per year, not per use of course!) even when used correctly (leaving space at the tip, using water-based lubricant). That is small but not negligible.

It would a good public service to have an in depth analysis of available evidence on contraception methods. Or maybe we should ask Scott Alexander to add a question on contraception failure to his annual survey?

I didn't say the risk was "very high" (which would indeed be nonsense), I said it is non-zero. And I personally know two men who were tricked into becomng fathers.

And the thing with average intelligence is that only 50% of the population has it. For both partners to have it has to be (slightly) less likely than that.