We are not prepared to win

TL;DR: It would be nice to survive for a long time and be happy about it. It doesn't look like we'll be happy about it right now. We should change that by putting more effort into making sure we'll be happy about it.

• Some [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] believe that AI is likely to cause the apocalypse
• [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] also consider the effects of living with well-developed, non-apocalyptic AI, likely or not
  • AI will [very probably, obviously] have extreme economic effects barring an apocalypse
    • Arguably the current state of the stock market is a present-tense effect
    • Mass unemployment would be in the question, with horrible knock-on effects
  • AI will maybe give individual people much more power than they otherwise would have
    • For both good and bad causes. E.g. curing a disease, creating a bioweapon
    • This seems to be a more volatile world to live in
  • AI will make the world very different and thus hard for John Doe to plan for
• [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] have built incredible infrastructure for the purpose of preventing an AI apocalypse
  • Community figureheads have build an impressive recruiting pipeline
  • Recruits are generally smart and/or open-minded people capable of engaging with complex problems effectively
  • Community figureheads have generally done well to draw recruits focus to preventing an AI apocalypse
  • The recruits generally do okay at preventing an AI apocalypse
    • [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] are doing their best to influence policy
    • [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] are taking up jobs that put them in a position to change the trajectory of the future with respect to AI safety
  • This is generally good and makes sense:
    • Community figureheads believe (or appear to believe) that there is a significant risk of the AI apocalypse
    • Community figureheads have done well to direct resources to preventing that because, if it occurs, game over
    • Yay
• [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] have built comparatively weak infrastructure for preventing the negative consequences of otherwise Good AI
  • This is not to say that no work has been done in this area. Indeed, it is still somewhat in focus for [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] See:
    • Eliezer Yudkowsky's 2013 "Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ"
    • The 2024 AI Safety Camp's "The Future of Work: How Can Policymakers Prepare for AI's Impact on Labor Markets?"
    • The highlighted Labor Automation Forecasting Hub over at Metaculus
  • But these efforts, both in quantity and quality, are far and away overshadowed by the efforts made to affect AI safety and related policy
    • Perhaps by a factor of 10x or 100x (bullshit numbers)
  • Efforts active in this space also tend to lack clear direction
    • [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] can forecast displacement statistics, so they know roughly how much humanity will need to adapt to the future landscape
    • But [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] do not know what [efficiently, least-painfully] adapting looks like
    • [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] also do not appear to have a huge repertoire of ideas on shaping a non-apocalypse environment to need less adaptation
      • The options apparent are also not necessarily desirable
• The bias towards Survival First makes sense
  • But perhaps [LessWrongers, Rationalists, etc.] have biased their efforts too strongly
  • It would be nice to both survive and be happy about it