Stuart Russell

The first nuclear weapon patent was 1939 by the French.

So this was actually, you know, this was actually...

going on, you know, well before World War II really got going.

And then, you know, the British probably had the most advanced capability in this area, but for safety reasons, among others, and sort of just resources, they moved the program from Britain to the US, and then that became Manhattan Project.

So the reason why we couldn't

I think there is a kind of motivated cognition, which is a term in psychology means that you believe what you would like to be true rather than what is true.

And, you know, it's unsettling to think that what you're working on might be the end of the human race, obviously.

So you would rather instantly deny it and come up with some reason why it couldn't be true.

And, you know, I have, I collected a long list of reasons that extremely intelligent, competent AI scientists have come up with for why we shouldn't worry about this.

For example, calculators are superhuman at arithmetic and they haven't taken over the world, so there's nothing to worry about.

Well, okay, my five-year-old could have figured out why that was an unreasonable and really quite weak argument.

Another one was, while it's theoretically possible that you could have superhuman AI destroy the world, it's also theoretically possible that a black hole could materialize right next to the earth and destroy humanity.

I mean, yes, it's theoretically possible.

Quantum theoretically, extremely unlikely that it would just materialize right there.

Um, but that's a completely bogus analogy because, you know, if the whole physics community on earth was working to materialize a black hole in near earth orbit, right?

Wouldn't you ask them, is that a good idea?

Is that going to be safe?

You know, what if you succeed?

Right.

Right.