I've spent the last couple of years working on AI risk at Coefficient Giving, but it’s only in the last few months that I’ve started to feel more viscerally that transformative AI is likely to happen and potentially very soon. To be honest, it probably took me longer than it should have.

This shift has been a really difficult emotional experience and I've been struggling at times. I imagine others reading this Forum might relate, I’m sorry if so.

Last month, I went home to spend Passover with my family, and I realized I needed to say something. It's just getting too real to sit with people I love and have normal conversations without mentioning how drastically and how quickly I think things could change for all of us. So I wrote them a letter describing where I think things could be headed.

CG has now published it on our Substack. It's written for a general audience (well, specifically my family), not for people already deep in these topics. I thought I’d share it here in case it's useful, whether you’re new to these ideas or have been working in the field for a while and thinking about having similar conversations with people you love. I hope it helps. 

(I should also caveat that I don’t consider myself a subject-matter expert, so I wouldn’t update on specific substantive claims as independent evidence. I didn’t want that to stop me from writing something though, and I linked various other resources from people who know more than me. Feedback welcome, of course!)