One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is ‘Meant to Distract Us’

(I want to preface by saying I don’t support AI, I don’t want to hype AI, I want AI research and development to stop immediately.)

Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.

Huh? Pretty sure autonomous weapons are part of the fears of extinction. It’s very hard to imagine an AI safety advocate doing “all the doom talk” would in any way support AI autonomous weapons. She and other AI safety researchers are on the same side! They don’t need to and shouldn’t fight each other.

Timnit Gebru: Why are they choosing certain disciplines? Somehow these subjects, like programming and chess and math, were elevated to mean, OK, you solved this and thereby you’ve solved intelligence.

Well that’s simple. Because the output of chess, programming, and math can be easily checked mechanically. Chess has win or loss, programs either pass tests or not, math proofs can be checked with Lean, etc. This makes these discipline very easy to train an AI on with reinforcement learning.

I thought an AI researcher would know this?

She’s not an AI researcher, she is a grievance studies major.