I can imagine a world where the robot plumber is never that much better than the ordinary plumber. In that world, people might rather have the ordinary plumber around for all kinds of very human reasons.

And that could generalize to a number of areas of human life where the advantage of the A.I., while real on some dimensions, is limited in ways... See more

Kokotajlo: I do agree that humanity is much better at regulating against problems that have already happened when we learn from harsh experience. Part of why the situation that we’re in is so scary is that for this particular problem, by the time it’s already happened, it’s too late.

Smaller versions of it can happen, though. For example, the stuff... See more

Well, and it yields a question I’ve thought about a lot as someone who follows the politics of regulation pretty closely. My sense is always that human beings are just really bad at regulating against problems that we haven’t experienced in some big, profound way.