ClaimsEliezer Yudkowsky

“Because I don’t think that the AI that you have built narrowly enough that you understood what it was doing is going to be able to defend you from arbitrary unrestrained superintelligences.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIRI senior researcher, podcast guest 28 February 2018 Sam Harris and Eliezer Yudkowsky on "AI: Racing Toward the Brink" (MIRI)

Prediction AI safety and alignment

An AI built narrowly enough to be understood will not be able to defend against arbitrary unrestrained superintelligences.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Prediction: Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?

Reasoning

Prediction about hypothetical unrestrained superintelligences with no horizon and no way to test.

Cite this claim

Eliezer Yudkowsky, “An AI built narrowly enough to be understood will not be able to defend against arbitrary unrestrained superintelligences.” (said 28 February 2018). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_8eeeac5b3db8, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_8eeeac5b3db8

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

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More prediction claims by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  1. Resolved false Prediction 6 April 2023
    “The current crop of people will not try it.”

    The current AI developers will not try the alignment approach he described (filtering training data to nice examples and training on it).

  2. Resolved true Prediction 6 April 2023
    “Alignment will not be solved in a few years.”

    AI alignment will not be solved within a few years.

  3. Resolved true Prediction 6 April 2023
    “even if GPT-5 doesn’t end the world, which I agree is like more than 50% of where my probability mass lies”

    GPT-5 will not end the world, with more than 50% of Yudkowsky's probability on that outcome.

  4. Mostly true Prediction 2008
    “Most AI researchers will not want to make unFriendly AIs.”

    Most AI researchers will not want to make unFriendly AIs.

  5. Mixed Prediction 5 March 2024
    “Beating GPT-4 on GI just forces OpenAI to release 4.5.”

    If a rival AI developer beats GPT-4 on general intelligence, OpenAI will be forced to release GPT-4.5.

All of them

Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.