Key Debates
Overview
Section titled “Overview”This section presents structured analyses of major debates in AI safety. For each debate, we present the strongest arguments on multiple sides, identify key cruxes, and track how expert opinionAi Transition Model MetricExpert OpinionComprehensive analysis of expert beliefs on AI risk shows median 5-10% P(doom) but extreme disagreement (0.01-99% range), with AGI forecasts compressing from 50+ years (2020) to ~5 years (2024). De...Quality: 61/100 has evolved.
Major Debates
Section titled “Major Debates”Foundational Questions
Section titled “Foundational Questions”- Is AI Existential Risk Real? - The core question of whether AI poses genuine existential risk
- AGI Timeline Debate - When might transformative AI arrive?
- Scaling Debate - Will scaling alone produce AGI?
Alignment Approach
Section titled “Alignment Approach”- Why Alignment Might Be HardArgumentWhy Alignment Might Be HardComprehensive synthesis of why AI alignment is fundamentally difficult, covering specification problems (value complexity, Goodhart's Law), inner alignment failures (mesa-optimization, deceptive al...Quality: 61/100 - Arguments for difficulty
- Why Alignment Might Be EasyArgumentWhy Alignment Might Be EasySynthesizes empirical evidence that alignment is tractable, citing 29-41% RLHF improvements, Constitutional AI reducing bias across 9 dimensions, millions of interpretable features from Claude 3, a...Quality: 53/100 - Arguments for tractability
- Interpretability Sufficient? - Can we rely on understanding models?
Strategy & Policy
Section titled “Strategy & Policy”- Pause Debate - Should AI development be paused?
- Open vs Closed - Open-source AI tradeoffs
- Regulation Debate - Government intervention approaches
Risk Assessment
Section titled “Risk Assessment”- The Case FOR AI Existential RiskArgumentThe Case For AI Existential RiskComprehensive formal argument that AI poses 5-14% median extinction risk by 2100 (per 2,788 researcher survey), structured around four premises: capabilities will advance, alignment is hard (with d...Quality: 66/100 - Strongest arguments for concern
- The Case AGAINST AI Existential RiskArgumentThe Case Against AI Existential RiskComprehensive synthesis of skeptical arguments against AI x-risk from prominent researchers (LeCun, Marcus, Ng, Brooks), concluding x-risk probability is <5% (likely ~2%) based on challenges to sca...Quality: 58/100 - Strongest counterarguments
How Debates Are Structured
Section titled “How Debates Are Structured”Each debate page includes:
- Steelmanned positions - Best versions of each argument
- Key cruxes - What would change minds
- Evidence and citations - Supporting data for each side
- Expert distribution - Where informed people fall
- Implications - How resolution would affect priorities