Is AI Safety a Pascal's Mugging? on HackerTube: recommended by 3 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2019–2026.
explainer · intro · evergreen
Robert Miles examines whether the case for AI safety is a Pascal's mugging, a tiny probability of an enormous payoff. He argues it is not, because AI risk does not depend on vanishingly small probabilities.
HN points to it as a reasoned rebuttal to the claim that AI risk is just Pascal's wager.
“the main point of the video is that kind of situation happens when the probability involved is vanishingly small”
4 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
Here’s a video called “Is AI safety a Pascal’s Mugging?”: ▶ this video From what I remember the main point of the video is that kind of situation happens when the probability involved is vanishingly small, and all the events you listed don’t have a vanishingly small probability, so they are not Pascal’s wager situations, just a normal rational safety concerns with particularly high consequences
in “There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming” · View on HN
The difference to Pascal’s wager is that with that the probability is vanishingly small, but given current progress the probability of AI causing an existential threat is actually quite high. You can’t just call anything that has very bad negative consequences Pascal’s wager Video about this: “Is AI Safety a Pascal’s Mugging?” ▶ this video
in “AI Causes Real Harm. Let’s Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype” · View on HN
All of this discussion really makes me think of Robert Miles "Is ai safety a Pascal's mugging?" from 4 years(!) ago[0]. All of this discussion has been had by Ai safety researchers for years in my layman understanding... Maybe we can look to them for insight in to these questions? [0] ▶ this video
in “OpenAI: Introducing SuperAlignment” · View on HN
Pascal's wager is actually logically flawed. If there are two separate AGI invented, and you could only have chosen to invest in one, then where's the infinite capture of value? See this video on a reasonable argument about this: ▶ this video
in “Sam Altman’s leap of faith” · View on HN