Introduction
When a system is made safer, its users may be willing to offset at least some of the safety improvement by using it more dangerously. A seminal example is that, according to Peltzman (1975), drivers largely compensated for improvements in car safety at the time by driving more dangerously. The phenomenon in general is therefore sometimes known as the “Peltzman Effect”, though it is more often known as “risk compensation”.[1] One domain in which risk compensation has been studied relatively carefully is NASCAR (Sobel and Nesbit, 2007; Pope and Tollison, 2010), where, apparently, the evidence for a large compensation effect is especially strong.[2]
In principle, more dangerous usage can partially, fully, or more than fully offset the extent to which the system has been made safer holding usage fixed. Making a system safer thus has an ambiguous effect on the probability of an accident, after its users change their behavior.
There’s no reason why risk compensation shouldn’t apply in the existential risk domain, and we arguably have examples in which it has. For example, reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) makes AI more reliable, all else equal; so it may be making some AI labs comfortable releasing more capable, and so maybe more dangerous, models than they would release otherwise.[3]
Yet risk compensation per se appears to have gotten relatively little formal, public attention in the existential risk community so far. There has been informal discussion of the issue: e.g. risk compensation in the AI risk domain is discussed by Guest et al. (2023), who call it “the dangerous valley problem”. There is also a cluster of papers and works in progress by Robert Trager, Allan Dafoe, Nick Emery-Xu, Mckay Jensen, and others, including these two and some not yet public but largely summarized here, exploring the issue formally in models with multiple competing firms. In a sense what they do goes well beyond this post, but as far as I’m aware none of t
This site is a great idea, but its frustrating that people in situations like myself seem to be unaccounted for. I'm looking for ethical job ideas that someone like myself could actually obtain out there in the world. I'm 36, and not in a financial position to return to school, nor do I want to. I'm low income and working a seasonal factory job at the moment. I make about $10,000-12,000 a year (yes, I actually live on that) so donating money is out of the question (I do however donate my time when I can). I had a good laugh when this website suggested I could donate "just" $12,000 a year! That's all there is here folks! lol. I do what I can for the causes I care about such as not driving a car for the environment and being vegan for both the environment and for my personal convictions that enslavement and killing of our fellow beings is morally wrong. I'd love to find a way to increase my income and also do more to help people, animals, and the planet. Any realistic suggestions are very welcome!!
Hi Ryder,
Unfortunately we only have a very small team, so we've had to choose a narrow audience to focus on for the time being.
We do have this article: https://80000hours.org/articles/how-to-make-a-difference-in-any-career/
I think you're right that you can focus on using your free time to make a difference. Then the question is which cause to focus on? https://80000hours.org/articles/cause-selection/
You mention promoting the end of factory farming. Within that, check this out: http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/resources/volunteering-advice/ One solid ... (read more)