I often see people talking past each other when discussing x-risks because the definition[1] covers outcomes that are distinct in some worldviews. For some, humanity failing to reach its full potential and humanity going extinct are joint concerns, but for others they are separate outcomes. Is there a good solution to this? 1. ^ "An existential risk is one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development." (source [https://existential-risk.org/])

Is there a safe way to ask dumb or potentially infohazardous questions? If you're not an expert in a field and are unsure whether your question could be hazardous or not, where do you go?   Perhaps I am being too security minded, but I feel like typing questions into a search engine or chatbot or publicly posting does not always seem like a good idea. I often sit on questions or ideas related to potential threats. I have no idea whether or not my questions/ thoughts are really dumb or whether some might be useful to existing efforts. I wonder if others experience this as well. Some of my thoughts or questions have been in relation to AI, supply chains, computer science, energy utilization, infrastructure (by location and by industry), intersectional risk (e.g. climate, nuclear, +), blockchain, telecommunication, hardware, natural resources, security (infosecurity, cybersecurity, hardware security, etc.), electronics (big and small), public messaging/communication/PR. I would really appreciate advice. If others have similar concerns, please upvote or pipe in, as it's possible that this is a problem that gets in the way with working on important problems and potentially could be turned into an opportunity.

I got access to Bing Chat. It seems: - It only searches through archived versions of websites (it doesn't retrieve today's news articles, it accessed an older version of my Wikipedia user site) - During archivation, it only downloads the content one can see without any engagement with the website (tested on Reddit "see spoiler" buttons which reveal new content in the code. It could retrieve info from posts that gained less attention but weren't hidden behind the spoiler button) I. e. it's still in a box of sorts, unless it's much more intelligent than it pretends. Edit: A recent ACX post [https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/janus-simulators] argues text-predicting oracles might be safer, as their ability to form goals is super limited, but it provides 2 models how even they could be dangerous: By simulating an agent or via a human who decides to take bad advice like "run the paperclip maximizer code". Scott implies thinking it would spontaneously form goals is extreme, linking a post by Veedrac [https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/kpPnReyBC54KESiSn/optimality-is-the-tiger-and-agents-are-its-teeth]. The best argument there seems to be: It only has memory equivalent to 10 human seconds. I find this  convincing for the current models but it also seems limiting for the intelligence of these systems, so I'm afraid for future models, the incentives are aligned with reducing this safety valve.