Did Bengio and Tegmark lose a debate about AI x-risk against LeCun and Mitchell?

Haven't watched it yet, but perhaps we should be cautious calling some arguments "heuristics", and some "logical arguments". I think the distinction isn't completely clear, and some arguments for AI extinction risk could be considered heuristics.

I feel like people might be interested in my opinions on the debate, as an AI doom skeptic. 

I think that this live debate format is not particularly useful in truth-finding, and in this case mostly ended up with shallow, 101 level arguments (on all sides). Nonetheless, it was a decent discussion, and I think everyone was polite and good faith. I definitely disagree with the OP that Mitchell was being "dismissive" for stating her honest belief that near-term AGI is unlikely. This is a completely valid position held by a significant portion of AI researchers. 

I thought Bengio was the best debater of the bunch, as he was calm and focused on the most convincing element of the AI risk argument (that of malicious actors misusing AI). I respect that he emphasised his own uncertainty a lot. 

Lecunn did a lot better than I was expecting, and I think laid his case pretty well and made a lot of good arguments. I think he might have misled the audience a little by not stating that his plan for controllable AI was speculative in nature. 

I found Tegmark to be quite bad in this debate. He overrelied upon unsupported speculation and appeals to authority, and didn't really respond to his opponents in his rebuttals. I found his continuous asking of probabilities to be a poor move: this may be the norm in EA spaces, but it looks very annoying to outsiders and is barely an argument. I think he is unused to communicating to the general public, I spotted a few occasions of using the terms "alignment" and "safety" in ways that would not have been obvious to an onlooker. 

Mitchell was generally fine and did bring up some good arguments (like that intelligent AI would be able to figure out what we wanted), but it felt like she was a little unprepared and wasn't good at responding to the others arguments. I think she would have done well to research the counterarguments to her points in order to address them better. 

Overall, I thought it was generally fine as an intro to the layman. 

Hi Karl,

Thanks for your post. You noted that it seems less of the audience was convinced by the end of the debate. I attended that debate, and the page where participants were supposed to vote about which side they were on was not loading. So, I expect far fewer people voted at the end of the debate than at the beginning. The sample of people who did vote at the end, therefore, may very well not be representative. All to say: I wouldn't weight the final vote too heavily! 

Quick addition, it's also up on their youtube channel with an (automatic) transcript here

I don't think viewing 'won' or 'lost' is a good frame for these debates. Instead, given that AI Safety and existential/catastrophic concerns are now a mainstream issue, debates like these are part of a consensus-making process for both the field and the general public. I think the value of these debates lies in normalising this issue as one that is valid to have a debate about in the public sphere. These debates aren't confined to LessWrong or in-the-know Twitter sniping anymore, and I think that's unironically a good thing. (It's also harder to dunk on someone to their face as opposed to their Twitter profile which is an added bonus).

For what it's worth the changes were only a few percentage points, the voting system was defective as you mention. Both sides can claim victory (the pro-side "people still agree with us" the anti-side "we changed more minds in the debate"). I think you're a bit too hasty to extrapolate what the 'AI Safety Side' strategy should be. I also think that the debate will live on in the public sphere after the end date, and I don't think that the 'no' side really came off as substantially better than the 'yes' side, which should set off people's concerns along the lines of "wait, so if it is a threat, we don't have reliable methods of alignment??" 

However, like everyone, I do have my own opinions and biases about what to change for future debates, so I suppose it'd be honest to own up to them:

• I think Yudkowsky would be a terrible choice for this kind of format and forum, though I suppose I could be wrong I really, really wouldn't want to risk it. 
• I think Tegmark probably comes across as the 'weak-link' in this debate, especially whens compared to 3 other AI experts, and from what I've seen of the debate he also comes across less fluent/eloquent than the others.^[1] 
• Personally think that Stuart Russell would be a great spokesman for the AI-risk-is-serious side, impeccable credentials, has debated the issue before (see here vs Melanie), and I think his persepective on AI risk lends itself to a "slow-takeoff" framing rather than a "hard-takeoff" framing which Bengio/Hinton/Tegmark etc. seem to be pushing more.

1. ^{^}

   This isn't valuable to truth-seeking, but it does have an impact of perceptions of legitimacy etc

Thanks for this post, good summary!

I recall reading that in debates like this, the audience usually moves against the majority position.

There's a simple a priori reason one might expect this: if to begin with there are twice as many people who agree with X as disagree with it, then the anti- side has twice as many people available who they can plausibly persuade to switch to their view.

If 10% of both groups change their minds, you'd go from 66.6% agreeing to 63.3% agreeing.

(Note that even a very fringe view benefits from equal time in a debate format, in a way that isn't the case in how much it gets covered in the broader social conversation.)

Would be neat if anyone could google around and see if this is a real phenomenon.

I haven't watched a recording of the debate yet and I intend to, though I feel like I'm familiar enough with arguments on both sides that I may not learn much. This review was informative. It helped me notice that understanding the nature of public dialogue and understanding of AGI risk may be the greatest learning value from the debate.

I agree with all the lessons you've drawn from this debate and laid out at the end of this post. I've got other reactions lengthy enough I may make them into their own top-level posts, though here's some quicker feedback.

In Bengio and Tegmark were always respectful and polite, even when Tegmark challenged Mitchell. This may have further increased LeCun’s credibility, since there were no attacks on him and he didn’t attack anyone himself. [...] It seems like a good idea to have a mix of differing opinions on your side, even somewhat extreme (though grounded in rationality) positions – these will strengthen the more moderate stances. In this specific case, a combination of Bengio and e.g. Yudkowsky may have been more effective.

I'd distinguish here between how extreme the real positions someone takes are, and how extreme their rhetoric is. For example, even if Yudkowsky were to take more moderate positions, I expect he'd still come across as an extremist based on the rhetoric he often invokes.

While my impression is that Yudkowsky is not as hyperbolic in direct conversations, like on podcasts, his reputation as among the more disrespectful and impolite proponents of AGI risk persists. I expect he'd conduct himself in a debate like this much the way Mitchell conducted herself, except in the opposite direction.

To be fair, there are probably some more bombastic than Yudkowsky. Yet I'd trust neither them nor him to do better in a debate like this.

I'm writing up some other responses in reaction to this post, though I've noticed a frustrating theme across my different takes. There are better and worse arguments against the legitimacy of AGI risk as a concern, though it's maddening that LeCunn and Mitchell mostly stuck to making the worse arguments.

Good summary and especially helpful with the table to present the differing views succinctly. I'm looking forward to watching this debate and wasn't aware it was out. It's really a shame that they had some glitch that might have affected how much we can rely on the final scores to represent what really happened with the audience views