LW - Robin Hanson AI X-Risk Debate - Highlights and Analysis by Liron

Link to original article

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Robin Hanson AI X-Risk Debate - Highlights and Analysis, published by Liron on July 13, 2024 on LessWrong.
This linkpost contains a lightly-edited transcript of highlights of my recent AI x-risk debate with Robin Hanson, and a written version of what I said in the post-debate analysis episode of my Doom Debates podcast.
Introduction
I've poured over my recent 2-hour AI x-risk debate with Robin Hanson to clip the highlights and write up a post-debate analysis, including new arguments I thought of after the debate was over.
I've read everybody's feedback on YouTube and Twitter, and the consensus seems to be that it was a good debate. There were many topics brought up that were kind of deep cuts into stuff that Robin says.
On the critical side, people were saying that it came off more like an interview than a debate. I asked Robin a lot of questions about how he sees the world and I didn't "nail" him. And people were saying I wasn't quite as tough and forceful as I am on other guests. That's good feedback; I think it could have been maybe a little bit less of a interview, maybe a bit more about my own position, which is also something that Robin pointed out at the end.
There's a reason why the Robin Hanson debate felt more like an interview. Let me explain:
Most people I debate have to do a lot of thinking on the spot because their position just isn't grounded in that many connected beliefs. They have like a few beliefs. They haven't thought that much about it. When I raise a question, they have to think about the answer for the first time.
And usually their answer is weak. So what often happens, my usual MO, is I come in like Kirby. You know, the Nintendo character where I first have to suck up the other person's position, and pass their Ideological Turing test. (Speaking of which, I actually did an elaborate Robin Hanson Ideological Turing Test exercise beforehand, but it wasn't quite enough to fully anticipate the real Robin's answers.)
With a normal guest, it doesn't take me that long because their position is pretty compact; I can kind of make it up the same way that they can. With Robin Hanson, I come in as Kirby. He comes in as a pufferfish. So his position is actually quite complex, connected to a lot of different supporting beliefs. And I asked him about one thing and he's like, ah, well, look at this study. He's got like a whole reinforced lattice of all these different claims and beliefs.
I just wanted to make sure that I saw what it is that I'm arguing against.
I was aiming to make this the authoritative followup to the 2008 Foom Debate that he had on Overcoming Bias with Eliezer Yudkowsky. I wanted to kind of add another chapter to that, potentially a final chapter, cause I don't know how many more of these debates he wants to do. I think Eliezer has thrown in the towel on debating Robin again. I think he's already said what he wants to say.
Another thing I noticed going back over the debate is that the arguments I gave over the debate were like 60% of what I could do if I could stop time. I wasn't at 100% and that's simply because realtime debates are hard. You have to think of exactly what you're going to say in realtime. And you have to move the conversation to the right place and you have to hear what the other person is saying. And if there's a logical flaw, you have to narrow down that logical flaw in like five seconds.
So it is kind of hard-mode to answer in realtime.
I don't mind it. I'm not complaining. I think realtime is still a good format. I think Robin himself didn't have a problem answering me in realtime. But I did notice that when I went back over the debate, and I actually spent five hours on this, I was able to craft significantly better counterarguments to the stuff that Robin was saying, mostly just because I had time to understand it i...