So you wrote a rather long post, I'll try to hone in on our disagreements. There are, I believe, two main disagreements:

1. I'm more confident than you in our ability to do something now and to predict things about AGI. Not much more confident, mind you, I just think the numbers are not literally 0, which makes most of your points above regarding amount of resources moot.

Basically, I think there are things we'll likely need to solve one way or another to figure out AI safety, and these are things we can work on. I also think that we can make some very rough estimates on timelines, and some very rough estimates on things we should do to mitigate.

2. I believe you misunderstand some of the points that people at MIRI make. You appear to classify them together with people like Ray Kurzweil, who appeals to exponential growth, etc, to make his arguments. The people at MIRI, afaict, don't really agree with this line of reasoning - in fact, I believe MIRI has all but ignored the progress on current AI for most of its existence (barring the last year or so), at least in terms of its research.

I mean, I agree that modern machine learning is not AGI or close to it. And I have no idea what AGI will look like - just a scaled up version of ML? A completely different take on things? The merge of a few different concepts together that will suddenly "tip over" to being capable? I have no idea. No one really does.

I am mindful, however, of a pretty long history of humans being terrible at predictions, in both directions - classic cases including people saying flight was impossible, a few years after the Wright brothers had already flown.

I'm not saying we're 2 years away from AGI - I'm saying we're not really sure, and even if we were 200 years away, I think it's worth spending some time and resources on trying to think about what we should do to prepare. The worldwide amount of resources spent on AGI and other existential risks are, what, 0.000001% of the amount of resources the world spends on sport? Does that really seem like a reasonable distribution to you?

>> (...) try to spread to other planets.

> So we have a science fiction problem and we're looking for science fiction solutions to it? :)

:)

It was just an example of something we can do right now. There are other examples if you want the other end of the spectrum - like stopping all technological decvelopment. I just don't think that will happen.

And let me point out that while AGI is a large threat IMO, lots of other things are large threats too - our technology is advancing on all fronts, and in many areas, we will soon be at a place where we can cause humanity to cease existing. E.g.:

1. Creation of weapons, much more powerful than atom bombs, that can effectively kill everyone.

2. Creation of super viruses that can destroy all humanity.

3. Creating the ability to "mind-upload" or similar, turning some people into much more powerful /faster thinkers/ whatever than others. It doesn't need to be an artificial super-intelligence to be dangerous.

And yes, these are all sci-fi scenarions, precisely because this is what's new in our world - scientific advancement! That's why the argument of "we've survived so far" is wrong - because the variable that's changing is the abilities that humanity has access to.