I will resolve this based on some combination of how much it gets talked about in elections, how much money goes to interest groups on both topics, and how much of the "political conversation" seems to be about either.
By 2028 I expect the current hype will have died down a lot. AI will not have cured cancer, or become sentient, or whatever the fuck Manifold and the SV-adjacent "intelligentsia" fantasizes about. It will be a normal tool, good for some stuff, bad for most other stuff. I use it every day to help me code, but farmers use machines to help them farm and I don't think combine harvesters were ever a hot political topic.
@pietrokc People were killing each other over mechanized textile production in the 1810s until the British government sent in 12,000 troops to arrest the protestors.
John Deere is still pretty politically salient today, it's the most commonly cited reason for the right to repair bills that have been passed in a few states recently.
Neither of those really reached 'as significant as abortion' levels, but if AI can reduce demand for knowledge workers in the US by 10%, that's 10 million people who have lost their livelihoods. I think it's quite plausible that that could push the issue to the top priority
@Frogswap That's interesting (though I have not fact checked it), but as you say people protest things all the time and many small laws exist for many diverse reasons. But abortion was at one time (haven't checked lately) the single issue for O(10%) of voters.
An important requirement for something to be a big political issue is that people have to disagree about it. If 10M people lose their livelihoods, do they disagree on anything? I guess somehow the impacted people could be overwhelmingly Dems or GOP, but afaik "knowledge work" is done ~equally by supporters of both parties.
@pietrokc If 10 million voters think their only chance of holding on to their living conditions is through government action, both parties are going to be advertising their strategy as much as they can going into the 2028 election. I expect that's true even if they have the same position, but there are plenty of degrees of freedom beyond everyone being anti-AI. One might support a ban while the other supports UBI via nationalization, for example.
@pietrokc If the hype dies down a lot, there is quite a chance that would cause a huge market crash (โ35% of the US stock market is held up by five or six companies buying GPUsโ). Would that count as โAI being a political issueโ?
@PetrKadlec in my understanding the crash itself would not count, but it would likely lead to demands for regulation etc which would count
@PetrKadlec I read that essay and I thought it was dumb. I don't think the hype dying down would lead to a huge market crash.
@zaperrer That has to resolve NO. Way more money is spent on cars than on AI but cars are not a bigger political issue than AI.
It's very possible that AI becomes very politically significant, but is not divisive enough to be a major electoral issue. It also suffers from the fact that it's so all encompassing that it's hard to rally agains, nor trust our governing bodies to handle. It'd be akin to having capitalism as a political issue.
@bens lol maybe in the Manifold bubble.
Regardless, this question is about what is the case in 2028, not now
@bens Do you think a quarter of voters see AI as their single biggest issue?
@benjaminIkuta Certainly based on the written description, thereโs other criteria that should be considered. But I do think itโs one useful barometer for anybody who might think that abortion is not that big of a deal politically
@Tumbles lol, I got a push notification that you'd filled my limit orders and I thought "good grief, is Tumbles diversifying and betting in a market other than the Canadian election??" but turns out you were selling not buying so I guess not. ๐
Decided to add to my YES position.
By 2028 the AI stuff is going to be interwoven with most of the existing issues.
AI and labor force replacement.
AI and military competitiveness
AI and Healthcare
AI and education
etc. etc.
Total amount of money flowing into politics vis a vis AI, total amount of discussion time related to it will outstrip abortion as an issue.
I think the explicit "vote for me because of position on abortion" might still be higher, but OP is likely to (imo correctly) look past just attempts to win single issue voters.
https://x.com/adcock_brett/status/1886860098980733197
if general purpose robots are enabled by AI, but the conversation is focused on the robots themselves without any mention of "AI," does it count? its unlikely people wouldn't draw the connection but just in case
@fakebaechallenge (I'm holding a yes)
I would think robots should count, because the debates about that are going to be directly tied in to AI debates.
Different then like "auto translate is so good that tech support is being off shored" imo
Analysis:
Scenarios leaning towards a No resolution:
Capabilities rapidly plateau; maybe some AI companies overextend and go bankrupt leading to less promotion and more use of (maybe weaker, maybe more expensive) open-source models; various obstruction efforts successfully slow down adoption enough that in 2028 (less than three years from time of writing) things still haven't exploded in everyone's faces. AI's rise as a political issue does not accelerate.
AI is de-powered and becomes a Resolved Issue.
PauseAI succeeds, an international treaty is adopted with strict limits on anything more powerful than ~GPT4.
AI rights advocates win, ban AI slavery/brainwashing/execution, eliminating practical uses.
Global catastrophe eliminates or radically reduces technological growth and/or compute-related manufacturing (but still leaves enough tech for Manifold to continue functioning).
Scenarios where resolution is irrelevant:
ASI happens.
ASI is imminent but isn't the global emergency of everyone's focus. Absence of global pause efforts result in certain apocalypse.
Other annihilation of existing technological civilization.
Scenarios leaning towards a Yes resolution:
Imminent X-risk (or other issue pointing towards Pause) becomes obvious to the public, is Not Solved, and becomes the global emergency of everyone's focus.
AI is Resolved, but in a manner leading to longer-term controversy about the details of its resolution.
Capabilities rapidly plateau, but adoption doesn't slow. "Mundane" AI concerns (eg unemployment) overtake the political landscape.
Overall, I'd say the current 60-65% is about right, maybe a bit high.