Unrelated to the thread of discussion, but thank you for posting it on your personal site, and not on Twitter/X.
I'd also be interested in how much your opinion on the existential threat of AI changes during your ten day backpacking trip, assuming it'll be a pretty offline experience.
Whilst I am involved in technology in my work and some of my hobbies, I do enough things 'away from the desk' that it feels to me that a lot of the doomerism is from people who have too much of their own personality and self-worth tangled up with the internet; the serially-online. I don't know where you naturally exist on that scale, but you already said you're outside the bubble and aren't the typical AI-rationalist-tech-bro (and surely the natural beauty of New Zealand is impossible to ignore).
I personally think that the old analogue world is big enough that some kind of AI-pocalypose wouldn't be anywhere near a civilisationally existential threat.
At risk of coming across an arrogant prick in telling you to do something: Consider your opinion now, and record it somehow. Then revisit it when you get back from your trip and see how far you've strayed from that as a baseline.
alt Hacker News
Unrelated to the thread of discussion, but thank you for posting it on your personal site, and not on Twitter/X.
I'd also be interested in how much your opinion on the existential threat of AI changes during your ten day backpacking trip, assuming it'll be a pretty offline experience.
Whilst I am involved in technology in my work and some of my hobbies, I do enough things 'away from the desk' that it feels to me that a lot of the doomerism is from people who have too much of their own personality and self-worth tangled up with the internet; the serially-online. I don't know where you naturally exist on that scale, but you already said you're outside the bubble and aren't the typical AI-rationalist-tech-bro (and surely the natural beauty of New Zealand is impossible to ignore).
I personally think that the old analogue world is big enough that some kind of AI-pocalypose wouldn't be anywhere near a civilisationally existential threat.
At risk of coming across an arrogant prick in telling you to do something: Consider your opinion now, and record it somehow. Then revisit it when you get back from your trip and see how far you've strayed from that as a baseline.