There's at least three major things that have been described as safety:
reply1) Won't end humanity. 2) Won't tell users to kill themselves. 3) Won't leak your corporate secrets to competitors.
People also define "won't generate images of human genitalia unless in the context of an anatomy textbook" as "safety".
replyAlso "won't accurately produce unabridged copies of popular fiction novels" and "will incorrectly tell users that HIV is not present in human saliva".
"safety" means a lot of things to a lot of people.
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replyI was referring to longtermism and transhumanism which are actually super popular among AI safety crowd. Basically, you do not worry all that much about currently living people. If they suffer or die, it does not matter much. Climate change now does not matter, lies or radicalization does not matter, suicides, hacks what have you does not matter.
replyWhat does matter is super long term view. If godlike AI in the future makes remaining people super super happy and makes them merge with tech to evolve and go to the stars, you have won. That matters more then short term nonsense like "people now".
You worry about godlike AI either not emerging at all or emerging as a bad god. That is safety.
AI safety people are mostly worried about AIs killing or otherwise harming us within the next ten years. That's actually pretty short term.
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