Prediction · timelines & doom
“Dying with dignity”: certain doom, no date
Predicted in 2022 from Death with Dignity, Apr 2022
“…doubling our chances of survival will only take them from 0% to 0%.”
Resolution
still open. The prediction is still open; no resolution deadline was supplied.
No resolution date was supplied.
Biological humans remain extant; the prediction is still open.
Timeline
- Prediction made
- 2022
- Resolution deadline
- No deadline supplied
- Chapter
- Chapter 06: MIRI: Advocacy
- Verdict
- still open
Context and outcome
The current prediction is now certain extinction. Alignment will not be solved in time, and the labs will not coordinate before one of them builds AGI. No date is attached, so the prediction remains unresolved.
Yudkowsky defines “dignity points” as improvements to humanity’s log odds of survival, however small. The instruction is to keep working on plans grounded in reality, say openly what you believe, refuse to abandon your ethics, and remain ready in case some unexpected opportunity appears.
He also says that fighting for even a little longer counts as more dignified. His later public warnings therefore follow from the strategy rather than contradicting it.
Supporting receipts
“It's obvious at this point that humanity isn't going to solve the alignment problem, or even try very hard, or even go out with much of a fight. … doubling our chances of survival will only take them from 0% to 0%.”
The post's bleak forecast is paired with a serious strategy: keep improving humanity's log odds without lying to yourself, abandoning ethics, or giving up.
“That's not what surviving worlds look like. … There's no plan. Surviving worlds, by this point, and in fact several decades earlier, have a plan for how to survive. It is a written plan. The plan is not secret.”
Items 41-42 of Yudkowsky's AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalities.
“you're not going to get the answer you want until right before the end of the world, and maybe not even then unless you're paying very close attention. Timing this stuff is just plain hard.”
Yudkowsky's dialogue dismissing biology-anchored AGI timeline forecasts as uninformative until the very end.