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Is AI Safety a Pascal's Mugging?

Robert Miles examines whether the case for AI safety is a Pascal's mugging, a tiny probability of an enormous payoff. He argues it is not, because AI risk does not depend on vanishingly small probabilities.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN points to it as a reasoned rebuttal to the claim that AI risk is just Pascal's wager.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Robert Miles AI Safety
Topic
ai safety
Format
explainer
Level
intro
HN recommenders in dataset
3
HN mentions in dataset
4
Recommendation years in dataset
2019–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Pascal's wager is actually logically flawed. If there are two separate AGI invented, and you could only have chosen to invest in one, then where's the infinite capture of value? See this video on a reasonable argument about this: [VIDEO]

    chii on Hacker News · 2019-05
    In Sam Altman’s leap of faith

  • All of this discussion really makes me think of Robert Miles "Is ai safety a Pascal's mugging?" from 4 years(!) ago[0]. All of this discussion has been had by Ai safety researchers for years in my layman understanding... Maybe we can look to them for …

    mptest on Hacker News · 2023-07
    In OpenAI: Introducing SuperAlignment

  • The difference to Pascal’s wager is that with that the probability is vanishingly small, but given current progress the probability of AI causing an existential threat is actually quite high. You can’t just call anything that has very bad negative consequences Pascal’s wager Video about …

    circuit10 on Hacker News · 2023-08
    In AI Causes Real Harm. Let’s Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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