Weaker News

J. Something 'just works' on the order of eg: train a predictive/imitative/generative AI on a human-generated dataset, and RLHF her to be unfailingly nice, generous to weaker entities, and determined to make the cosmos a lovely place.

K. Somebody discovers a new AI paradigm that's powerful enough and matures fast enough to beat deep learning to the punch, and the new paradigm is much much more alignable than giant inscrutable matrices of floating-point numbers.

Something wonderful happens that isn't well-described by any option listed. (The semantics of this option may change if other options are added.)

M. "We'll make the AI do our AI alignment homework" just works as a plan. (Eg the helping AI doesn't need to be smart enough to be deadly; the alignment proposals that most impress human judges are honest and truthful and successful.)

C. Solving prosaic alignment on the first critical try is not as difficult, nor as dangerous, nor taking as much extra time, as Yudkowsky predicts; whatever effort is put forth by the leading coalition works inside of their lead time.

B. Humanity puts forth a tremendous effort, and delays AI for long enough, and puts enough desperate work into alignment, that alignment gets solved first.

E. Whatever strange motivations end up inside an unalignable AGI, or the internal slice through that AGI which codes its successor, they max out at a universe full of cheerful qualia-bearing life and an okay outcome for existing humans.

O. Early applications of AI/AGI drastically increase human civilization's sanity and coordination ability; enabling humanity to solve alignment, or slow down further descent into AGI, etc. (Not in principle mutex with all other answers.)

I. The tech path to AGI superintelligence is naturally slow enough and gradual enough, that world-destroyingly-critical alignment problems never appear faster than previous discoveries generalize to allow safe further experimentation.

H. Many competing AGIs form an equilibrium whereby no faction is allowed to get too powerful, and humanity is part of this equilibrium and survives and gets a big chunk of cosmic pie.

A. Humanity successfully coordinates worldwide to prevent the creation of powerful AGIs for long enough to develop human intelligence augmentation, uploading, or some other pathway into transcending humanity's window of fragility.

D. Early powerful AGIs realize that they wouldn't be able to align their own future selves/successors if their intelligence got raised further, and work honestly with humans on solving the problem in a way acceptable to both factions.

N. A crash project at augmenting human intelligence via neurotech, training mentats via neurofeedback, etc, produces people who can solve alignment before it's too late, despite Earth civ not slowing AI down much.

G. It's impossible/improbable for something sufficiently smarter and more capable than modern humanity to be created, that it can just do whatever without needing humans to cooperate; nor does it successfully cheat/trick us.

L. Earth's present civilization crashes before powerful AGI, and the next civilization that rises is wiser and better at ops. (Exception to 'okay' as defined originally, will be said to count as 'okay' even if many current humans die.)

You are fooled by at least one option on this list, which out of many tries, ends up sufficiently well-aimed at your personal ideals / prejudices / the parts you understand less well / your own personal indulgences in wishful thinking.

F. Somebody pulls off a hat trick involving blah blah acausal blah blah simulations blah blah, or other amazingly clever idea, which leads an AGI to put the reachable galaxies to good use despite that AGI not being otherwise alignable.

Sexism and racism, among other forms of prejudice, are responsible for worse health outcomes, and it’s not overly dramatic for people to treat those issues as public health/safety concerns.

Prediction markets are good

[*] ...and things will improve in the future

Tenet (Christopher Nolan film) is underrated

Authoritarian populism is bad actually

We should be doing much more to pursue human genetic engineering to prevent diseases and aging.

Scientific racism is bad, actually. (also it's not scientific)

Most organized religion are false

The Fermi paradox isn't a paradox, and the solution is obviously just that intelligent life is rare.

Prolonged school closures because of COVID were socially devastating.

The way quantum mechanics is explained to the lay public is very misleading.

Nuclear power is by far the best solution to climate change. [N]

Pineapple pizza tastes good

The Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics

Humans have a responsibility to figure out what if anything we can do about wildlife suffering.

Physician-assisted suicide should be legal in most countries

First-past-the-post electoral systems are not merely flawed but outright less democratic than proportional or preferential alternatives

Liberal-democracy is good actually

Peeing in the shower is good and everyone should do it

It would actually be a good thing if automation eliminated all jobs.

We need a bigger welfare state than we have now.

Many amphetamines and psychedelics have tremendous therapeutic value when guided by an established practitioner.

The proliferation of microplastics will be viewed as more harmful to the environment than burning fossil fuels, in the long term

American agents are in the highest positions in government for more than half the world.

Free will doesn't require the ability to do otherwise.

We should give every American food stamps, in a fixed dollar amount, with no means testing or work requirements or disqualification for criminal convictions.

Metaculus will take over Manifold in more serious topics, and Manifold will be known as the "unserious" prediction market site

Given what we know about the social and health effects of being fired, even if abolishing at will employment has efficiency costs it is likely worth it.

The overall state of the world is pretty good... [*]

Dialetheism (the claim that some propositions are both true and false) is itself both true and false.

Dreams analysis is a legitimate means of gaining personal insight.

Mobile UX will be a key explaining factor in explaining the stories of Manifold and Metaculus.

If a developed nation moves from democratic to authoritarian government today, it should be expected to end up poorer, weaker, sicker, and stupider.

Factory farming is horrific but it is not wrong to eat meat.

California is wildly overrated.

The United States doesn't need a strong third party.

Being a billionaire is morally wrong.

Racial Colorblindness is the only way to defeat racism

People will look back on using animal products as a moral disgrace on the level of chattel slavery.

There's a reasonable chance of a militant green/communist movement that gains popular support in the coming decade.

Eating meat is morally wrong in most cases.

Political libertarianism

You should bet NO on this option

The Windows kernel is better than Linux; it’s just all the bloat piled on top that makes it worse

[N], and to the extent climate activists are promoting other kinds of solutions, they are actively making the situation worse by diverting attention and resources from nuclear power.

White people are the least racist of any racial group

Technology is not making our lives easier or more fulfilling.

COVID lockdowns didn’t save many lives; in fact they may have caused net increases in global deaths and life years lost.

Light mode is unironically better than Dark mode for most websites

God is evil

A sandwich is a type of hot dog

Some people have genuine psychic capabilities

Astrology is a legitimate means of gaining personal insight.

Climate change is significantly more concerning than AI development.

Mereological nihilism (composite objects don't exist)

It's acceptable for our systems of punishment to be retributive in part

AI will not be as capable as humans this century, and will certainly not give us genuine existential concerns

China not having real democracy does more good than harm

Dentistry is mostly wasted effort.

Moral Hazard isn’t real, and all the purported instances of it can be chalked up to coincidence or confounding variables

Reincarnation is a real phenomenon

Governments should not support parents for having children that they cannot take care of

Mass surveillance (security cameras everywhere) has more positives than negatives

Donald Trump would have been a better president than Joe Biden

SBF didn't intentionally commit fraud

Future generations will say that on balance the world reacted appropriately after learning that fossil fuels cause climate change. That the balance between addressing the problem and slowing economies was just about right.

Humans don't have free will.

The next American moon landing will be faked

AI art is better than human art

Communism just wasn't implemented well, next time it will work

The human race should voluntarily choose to go extinct via nonviolent means (antinatalism).

The first American moon landing was faked

Souls/spirits are real and can appear to the living sometimes

LK-99 room temp, ambient pressure superconductivity pre-print will replicate before 2025

YES

K. Somebody discovers a new AI paradigm that's powerful enough and matures fast enough to beat deep learning to the punch, and the new paradigm is much much more alignable than giant inscrutable matrices of floating-point numbers.

I. The tech path to AGI superintelligence is naturally slow enough and gradual enough, that world-destroyingly-critical alignment problems never appear faster than previous discoveries generalize to allow safe further experimentation.

C. Solving prosaic alignment on the first critical try is not as difficult, nor as dangerous, nor taking as much extra time, as Yudkowsky predicts; whatever effort is put forth by the leading coalition works inside of their lead time.

B. Humanity puts forth a tremendous effort, and delays AI for long enough, and puts enough desperate work into alignment, that alignment gets solved first.

Something wonderful happens that isn't well-described by any option listed. (The semantics of this option may change if other options are added.)

M. "We'll make the AI do our AI alignment homework" just works as a plan. (Eg the helping AI doesn't need to be smart enough to be deadly; the alignment proposals that most impress human judges are honest and truthful and successful.)

A. Humanity successfully coordinates worldwide to prevent the creation of powerful AGIs for long enough to develop human intelligence augmentation, uploading, or some other pathway into transcending humanity's window of fragility.

E. Whatever strange motivations end up inside an unalignable AGI, or the internal slice through that AGI which codes its successor, they max out at a universe full of cheerful qualia-bearing life and an okay outcome for existing humans.

J. Something 'just works' on the order of eg: train a predictive/imitative/generative AI on a human-generated dataset, and RLHF her to be unfailingly nice, generous to weaker entities, and determined to make the cosmos a lovely place.

O. Early applications of AI/AGI drastically increase human civilization's sanity and coordination ability; enabling humanity to solve alignment, or slow down further descent into AGI, etc. (Not in principle mutex with all other answers.)

D. Early powerful AGIs realize that they wouldn't be able to align their own future selves/successors if their intelligence got raised further, and work honestly with humans on solving the problem in a way acceptable to both factions.

F. Somebody pulls off a hat trick involving blah blah acausal blah blah simulations blah blah, or other amazingly clever idea, which leads an AGI to put the reachable galaxies to good use despite that AGI not being otherwise alignable.

L. Earth's present civilization crashes before powerful AGI, and the next civilization that rises is wiser and better at ops. (Exception to 'okay' as defined originally, will be said to count as 'okay' even if many current humans die.)

G. It's impossible/improbable for something sufficiently smarter and more capable than modern humanity to be created, that it can just do whatever without needing humans to cooperate; nor does it successfully cheat/trick us.

H. Many competing AGIs form an equilibrium whereby no faction is allowed to get too powerful, and humanity is part of this equilibrium and survives and gets a big chunk of cosmic pie.

N. A crash project at augmenting human intelligence via neurotech, training mentats via neurofeedback, etc, produces people who can solve alignment before it's too late, despite Earth civ not slowing AI down much.

You are fooled by at least one option on this list, which out of many tries, ends up sufficiently well-aimed at your personal ideals / prejudices / the parts you understand less well / your own personal indulgences in wishful thinking.

YES

YES

Other

Democratic

Republican

No election in 2100 (e.g. because the US ceases exist)

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES