Trust is Gone: AI Safety Needs Individuals

When humanity avoids a disaster, it's usually because we have put preparations in place. To the uninformed, these seem like wastes of time—after all, nothing happened, so the threat wasn't real, right? However, when there weren't enough preparations, and calamity does occur, people can always find someone to blame for negligence. The Preparedness Paradox is almost always a communication issue. If the public didn't think that safety measures were necessary after a disaster, then that's a clear sign that the issue isn't clear to the public. There seem to be two types of information loss that causes public misunderstanding. Type 1: Information of what was known before a disaster It seems like the public commonly misgauges how much information is known by authorities/experts before a disaster. Hindsight bias usually results in the public perceiving that authorities knew just as much before and after. If the public believes this, then the authorities must be either stupid or intentionally making poor decisions—both of which erode trust in experts and authorities. Governments knew little about COVID when it was new on the scene, which resulted in lots of conflicting guidelines being released as they were getting new information. If the uncertainty was more accurately conveyed during the progression of the pandemic, potentially the public would have been more receptive to later guidelines. Ensuring what information was known before a disaster can help the public make a more informe…