AGI threat persuasion study

Abstract

Many academics and technologists believe that the creation of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is likely to have catastrophic consequences for humans. In the Spring semester of 2011, I decided to see how effectively I could communicate the idea of a threat from AGI to my undergraduate classes. I spent three sessions on this for each of my two classes. My goal was to shift my students’ attitudes as far as possible in the direction of believing that an AGI will cause human extinction soon. I employed a variety of rational and non-rational methods of persuasion. I gave out a survey before and after. An analysis of the survey responses indicates that the students underwent a statistically significant shift in their reported attitudes. After the three sessions, students reported believing that AGI would have a larger impact1 and also a worse impact2 than they originally reported believing. As a result of this exercise, I also learned a number of surprising things about how my students thought about AGI. This paper describes what happened in the sessions, presents the data from the surveys and discusses the conclusions I think we can draw. As far as I know, this is the first study of its kind. It is an important question how much the lessons learned here can be extended to other contexts. Many avenues of investigation remain open.