Please Be Serious

Recently, Eliezer Yudkowsky participated in a very flawed podcast of Doom Debates that reflected poorly on him, and, likely in the eyes of many, the entire AI safety movement. The premise of the debate was that Eliezer Yudkowsky was offered 10,000$ to debate an anonymous "AI lab director", and this director quickly made the debate into a mess by interrupting, yelling, and using profanity. Sure, Yudkowsky may have come across as sane in comparison, but his opponent did make one critical point during the debate: Yudkowsky's agreeing to debate him in the first place may have been a mistake.

To analyze why, think of other public figures. Generally, the more respectable and well-known the figure, the more exacting they are in choosing who to interact with publicly. This isn't just due to them having time constraints or options on which they can spend their time; it is also due to the fact that, as you become more respectable and well-known, your reputation also becomes valuable, and thus something worth protecting. If you frequently participate in farces like the recent Doom Debate, it diminishes people's respect for you and thus imposes a real cost. Yudkowsky's decision can surely be defended in this case. Perhaps Yudkowsky can deploy this money in a way that makes up for reputational damage, but this decision is just the first in a long line of choices to disregard reputational costs. For instance, Yudkowsky frequently wears bizarre and garish outfits. In the aforementioned debate, Yudkowsky wore the pictured steampunk-inspired outfit that looked right out of a comic convention. Ask yourself honestly, does this help or hurt his reputation and ability to convince others of his cause? Maybe if Yudkowsky had impeccable credentials and oodles of charisma and public speaking ability, these decisions would seem less important, but he has very few traditional credentials that will impress a new audience (Yudkowsky did not even graduate from high school, much less have a college degree or PHD), and he is not a very charismatic speaker. Thus, each Yudkowsky appearance actually hurts our cause, as in the best of times, Yudkowsky is not a very good spokesperson for AI safety, and in the worst of times, he is wearing ostentatious hats while coming across poorly to his audiences.

Maybe in a more ideal world, charisma and appearance wouldn’t matter so much, but we need to play the cards we are given. Major news outlets have focused on Eliezer Yudkowsky’s idiosyncratic fashion sense^[1], and it's not just traditional media that have been skeptical of Yudkowsky. Even before a lot of the scrutiny from the media, many people were skeptical of Yudkowsky. On r/samharris, a poll on whether people should take Eliezer Yudkowsky seriously had 571 respondents: 300 of them replied "No". Of course, Yudkowsky is not stupid; he has an apparent justification for his actions: "If it ever starts looking like the difference between death and life then perhaps I will, or more likely simply withdraw from public view. {...}". According to Yudkowsky, humanity is likely doomed anyway, so his reputation in society isn't that important. Might as well grab that cash while he still can. However, as someone who believes that AI poses an existential risk to humanity yet still believes there is a lot we can do about it, this decision-making process is profoundly self-defeating and counterproductive.

We have much to thank Eliezer Yudkowsky for. His work has greatly contributed to the development of the AI Safety field and affected many people’s lives in a positive manner. I hope Eliezer Yudkowsky continues to share his ideas (in writing) about whichever topics interest him. However, I also hope you, fellow members of this forum, can join me in this plea: Eliezer Yudkowsky: please stop making public appearances.

 Crossposted from LessWrong.

1. ^{^}

   I didn't review the article fully because it is paywalled, but Eliezer Yudkowsky referred to it as a "smear article" and it uses a picture of Yudkowsky wearing a sparkly hat.