Would if have been better to go safety first with nuclear weapons so that Germany might develop them first in WW2?
I find that by going very fast and in the open, humanity has the best chance of producing safe AI. Slowing down and making it closed will result in a much worse outcome. Who gets to make the decision on who gets to utilize that kind of knowledge power? Why is such a small group of people being given power over all of the collective human sacrifices and knowledge to get to where we all are?
I’m not arguing that safety is nonsense. I’m arguing that humanity doesn’t know how to both move and be safe, at least at scale. We can do it as individuals when we exercise caution in an endeavor, but in groups we either move or we do not move. When we admit the cautionary forces it becomes a vetocracy of fear and everything stops.
This is why it usually takes an unhinged maniac to make progress at anything, like the psycho behind the company launching the rocket today.
We are not good at this.
Edit: forgot to add that things are even more complicated because sometimes there are hidden risks to not acting. Take nuclear power, which we basically paused when we encountered the risks. By doing that we blew our chance to head off climate change.