A Response to "Situational Awareness" - by Steve Newman

Leopold Aschenbrenner, who until recently worked on the “superalignment” team at OpenAI, believes that the United States should go on a wartime footing to develop advanced AI and use it to take over the world – so that China doesn’t get there first. I believe this is a fair summary of his recent 165-page treatise on the future of AI, “SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: The Decade Ahead”. I also believe that his assumptions are wrong, and his conclusions dangerous. In this post, I’m going to summarize the paper, and explain where I think it goes wrong. I just published 2500 words explaining why it’s better to talk to people than to argue with them on the Internet, so: Leopold1, if you’re reading this, please message me here on Substack, I’d love to talk; in the meantime, I’m going to try to get in touch with you. And instead of just disagreeing, I’m going to finish by presenting some thoughts on how to best move forward given that we should both be humble about our ability to predict the future. Wa

Leopold Aschenbrenner, who until recently worked on the “superalignment” team at OpenAI, believes that the United States should go on a wartime footing to develop advanced AI and use it to take over the world – so that China doesn’t get there first. I believe this is a fair summary of his recent 165-page treatise on the future of AI, “SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: The Decade Ahead”. I also believe that his assumptions are wrong, and his conclusions dangerous. In this post, I’m going to summarize the paper, and explain where I think it goes wrong. I just published 2500 words explaining why it’s better