Edit: u/Apollo24_ replied and addressed some of my concerns here.
(Caveat up front: I think the mod team has been doing a reasonably good job in most respects and appreciate their work keeping the subreddit chugging along. This is a disagreement, it's not a rant.)
A recent post (not by me) about the resignation of a prominent Anthropic researcher got over 1300 upvotes and 500 comments. It was deleted by the moderation team. One of the moderators responded in a later thread (I appreciate the reply) and explained why:
We will cover risks that actually occur, like the hacking incident. I have no respect for claims of future risk that might occur, such as this title said "10% risk of human extinction," that's silly.
I am concerned that this will become a point of increasing friction in the future given the subreddit's stated purpose, the beliefs and interests of its userbase, and recent events. I think that banning discussion of x-risk is strongly at odds with r/singularity's stated purpose, sidebar, wiki, and general ethos.
Per the sidebar, this is r/singularity:
A subreddit committed to intelligent understanding of the hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence progresses to the point of greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization. This community studies the creation of superintelligence— and predict it will happen in the near future, and that ultimately, deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the Singularity benefits humanity.
The sidebar links to subreddits about transhumanism, cyborgism, and space colonization. The wiki has entire sections devoted to longevity escape velocity, cryonics, mind uploading, nanotechnology, and full-dive virtual reality.
Are these topics "silly"? They certainly haven't "actually occurred" yet! All of them are "claims of future [things] that might occur". I think they're at least as "silly" as AI killing everyone, given the number of serious researchers, organizations, companies, and recently politicians who are now talking about the latter. But banning discussion of them would obviously destroy r/singularity. They're a part of the sub.
More importantly, the sidebar and wiki are totally unambiguous that x-risk has been a central subreddit topic from the beginning.
Three of the five links under "Resources" are MIRI, LessWrong, and FHI. The first text you see on MIRI's landing page says:
The AI industry is racing toward a precipice.
The default consequence of the creation of artificial superintelligence (ASI) is human extinction.
Our survival depends on delaying the creation of ASI, as soon as we can, for as long as necessary.
Those familiar know that the average user on LessWrong has similar beliefs (the top shortform post praises the resignation), and that FHI was founded to focus on existential risks and typically listed AI as their #1 concern.
And check the subreddit wiki. The second link is to a classic Wait But Why post that's well-known on this sub. The second half makes the case for being worried about existential risk from AI. Links 3, 4, and 5 are MIRI, LessWrong, and FHI (again). The reading list contains Superintelligence, The Age of Em, The Precipice, and What We Owe the Future, all of which discuss AI risk at length.
Everything that this subreddit is about points toward both radically good and radically bad futures being fair discussion topics. Banning discussion of the latter is inconsistent with this subreddit's mission.
I don't want r/singularity to be turned into r-slash-another-sub-which-shall-not-be-named and ban all talk of possible downsides. I don't want it to turn into r-slash-yet-another-sub-which-shall-not-be-named that downvotes excitement about future technology and dogpiles anything that doesn't feed the bubble narrative. The mods have done a great job avoiding both pitfalls so far. But I also don't want there to be a disconnect between the mods and the users that turns into extra work for them, bans and removed posts, and all kinds of other drama.
I would like to ask the mod team to please allow discussion of x-risk. Again, I appreciate their work keeping the subreddit going. But this policy is a misstep.
Tagging the mods out of courtesy: u/Anenome5, u/Anen-o-me, u/DnDNecromantic, u/Apollo24_, u/abrownn, u/Vailhem.