Tobes (author/narrator of the LessWrong linkpost)

No one in my org puts money in their pension.

By Tobes.

This is a link post for, link in text, epistemic status.

The stories here are all as true as possible from memory, but my memory is so so.

It's warm and sunny and the air feels fresh.

With me are around 20 other people from the Effective Altruism London community.

We've travelled west for a retreat to discuss how to help others more effectively with our donations and careers.

As we cross cow field after cow field, I get talking to one of the people from the group I don't know yet.

He seems smart and cheerful.

He tells me that he is an AI researcher at Google DeepMind.

He explains how he is thinking about how to make sure that any powerful AI system actually does what we want it to.

I ask him if we are going to build artificial intelligence that can do anything that a human can do.

Yes, and soon, he says, and it will be the most important thing that humanity has ever done.

I find this surprising.

It would be very weird if humanity was on the cusp of the most important world-changing invention ever, and so few people were seriously talking about it.

I don't really believe him.

Heading.

This is going to be bad.

It is midsummer 2018 and I am cycling around Richmond Park in South West London.

It's very hot and I am a little concerned that I am sweating off all my sun cream.