So quit. There's worse things can happen to you than "poverty". Lose
some money. you'll make it back one day. But sacrifice your soul,
your ethics, your dignity and the best years of your life for for some
shitty tech company - you'll never get that back.
It's easy to say "just be in poverty you'll earn it back some day" when you don't have kids to feed or pay for the school tuition, Christmas presents or other associated expenses
Isn't it easy to say anything, and almost always harder to back it
up with actions? Actions that require sacrifice and personal
inconvenience for the benefit of others - specifically, your children
who will benefit in the future.
Ever refused your kid that "pester power" plastic toy, even though it
meant screaming tantrums?
It's even harder to be unpopular, and even worse having to see those
you love suffer present hardship while unable to fully understand the
sacrifices you make for their future security.
What it comes down to is what kind of a person you are. Leaders in
life don't habitually choose short-term popularity and safety.
This tension (and I think widespread misunderstanding) underwrites so
much at stake today;
Will you leave your car and take public transport, even while your kid
is whining at you that other parents all take the car, remaining
resolute that you have their real long-term interests at heart?
Will you fight in a war, knowing you may well die, so your country or
way of life won't be wiped out?
Not working at a shitty tech company - when you know it's very
organising principle is to spy on, exploit and deceive you and your
family - is frankly a bloody good investment for the future, even if
it means eating cold baked beans from a can for a while.
All parents and leaders know that life sometimes requires making
sacrifices. Just sometimes they are aren't the obvious ones.
I'm sure you are not the kind of person is happy only so long as it's
others who are making the sacrifices for the security of your
grandchildren?
Maybe I could be a callous crook who built an empire of misery on the
bones of small suffering children, and then - repenting upon hearing
the word of the Lord (or something), made these professions.
Would it add or subtract from the truth value of what I said?
There is no paradox as I see it. All involved believe that AI is going to be revolutionary. They only disagree on its potential impact. But either way, if you believe this is going to be something powerful, then you would want to be able to possess it, control it and learn all about it.
Although I respect Mr. Musk, I am partial towards Mr. Page's prediction. We are not going to be able to keep AI in a bottle, just like we could never dream of keeping any other technological revolution of the past contained.
The paradox is that this technology only comes into being by deliberate effort from those claiming it is dangerous. These companies wouldn’t exist if they weren’t funded by SV billionaires and corps.
I thought the recent Oppenheimer film dramatized this sort of scenario quite well. People rushing to build a weapon, claiming it’s dangerous and must not be used, and then feigning innocence and surprise when it was used.
It makes more sense in the bigger picture. Extending the nuclear example - the scenario after building nukes is that one day everyone will die. The scenario before nukes is one day everyone will die.
So on the one side everyone is correct, the nukes are dangerous and should not be used. But on the other hand, the end state hasn't changed and the path seems to be a bit better. So, arguably a good idea. But it'd be even better if we don't all nuke each other.
AI is similar. We're already on the clock before WWIII or maybe WWIV wipes out everything. However, in the mean time, AI will probably lead to some really great outcomes. Or if it replaces us then hey, we weren't doing so hot anyway and at least AI is has a better shot of getting off the planet. All life is in it together! Or in the extreme case, maybe it is a dud and the whole things was a false alarm, although that seems a stretch.
I’m not commenting so much on the specific reasoning, as I think it’s a complex topic and I haven’t thought/read enough about it.
I’m more just pointing out that key figures seem to downplay their own agency and responsibility for their actions, offloading them to “it would have happened anyway.” Maybe, but that’s a counterfactual and I think it’s pretty easy to see how a few decisions and lack of funding in certain areas would have changed the historical trajectory quite a bit.
> Or if it replaces us then hey, we weren't doing so hot anyway and at least AI is has a better shot of getting off the planet.
Just like Page was mentioned, there is an alarming amount of people who believe "hey if we kill all humans so that our computer creations go on to do cool things, so be it." Including e/acc founder. https://twitter.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1683462000360280065
You are far past the crazies that say "just nuke X country."
"Nuking X country" is also an inevitability at this point. The only question is how long - we're not sure if we're seeing 10%, 1% or 0.1% events with the near misses from the US and Russia. Let alone the proliferation issues and whatever we don't hear about.
At least with AI something is being created that is greater than us. The high probability of a nuclear war is only going to be creating a park for cockroaches.
"feigning innocence and surprise" is quite unfair in both cases. E.g. Szilard invented the nuclear chain reaction, pushed his colleagues to avoid open research, and then when an arms race was apparently at the point of starting, wrote that letter to the U.S. president to start the Manhattan project; and tried to influence how it was used and governed. This is maybe not such a close analogy to people like Yudkowsky, but it's surprisingly close as history goes.
And yet they still did the work to build the bomb.
It is a complex ethical situation, but I don’t think you get to build innovative new weapons for your political leaders and then consider yourself off the hook when they decide to use them against your too-little, too-late advice.
> But either way, if you believe this is going to be something
powerful, then you would want to be able to possess it, control it
and learn all about it.
This reveals interesting assumptions.
There are some powerful things where you simply want to put as much
distance between you and it as possible. We have forgotten that, in
our hubris.
There are many nasty, predatory things in nature that work by enticing
its victim into wanting to possess and control it. That is the essence
of the con (confidence trick) that underlies a big portion of social
engineering.
When "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" it's compulsion, not
reason. "Technological determinism" is a failure of will, common I
think, amongst those who actually lack vision and need a "Utopian
narrative" to fill in the emptiness.
It's not that "the will" is wrong, it's just missing. We are doing
21st century science bit still with an 18th century science and
technology attitude, stumbling along from one surprise to the next,
mouths agog in technical awe and giddy excitement.
As a kid in the 20th century I'd always imagined that 21st century
science would be purposeful, and rooted in some coherent social telos.
After all, the problems of the world are quite evident.
To "posses and control" one has to see the thing as a weapon, and
that is the unsaid thing in all these discussions.
The "AI debate" is all about blind hope. Hope that a largely
incomprehensible technology will serve my interests better than
yours - and that I can weaponise them before others do, and that I'm
prepared to risk everybody's welfare to take a shot at it.
The current crop of text or image generators may automate the production of low quality text and images, may produce useful diagnostic and comprehension tools, and indeed may replace some people's jobs, but that is it.
Underlying the hype is the desire of technical people to stay relevant in a world that has absorbed and purposed the mobile internet, and thereafter really isn't that interested in much more. There are more pressing non-technical problems to solve, and they will be solved without technical people.
(wealth inequality, sustaining our environment, and demographic collapse being the most pressing)
A casual browse of /r/stablediffusion proves otherwise. The innovation of the last few weeks is already on full display and will disrupt so many professional workflows.
> just like we could never dream of keeping any other technological revolution of the past contained
We contain many of them, such as many dangerous drugs, hand grenades, nuclear weapons, etc.
The argument that it's inevitable is, if we step back, transparently self-serving for the SV powers. Not coincidentally it ends the same as all their reasoning: Maximized power and money for them.
It's truly astonishing how many impactful things Thiel has his hands in very very early. PayPal, SpaceX, Facebook, Ethereum, Palantir, DeepMind, OpenAI, Yudkowsky, Figma founder was a Thiel Fellow, Seasteading, successful election of an Ohio Senator, etc.
Also, it is an ugly stain on NYT's reputation to have "Mr. Yudkowsky was a leader in a community of people who called themselves Rationalists or, in later years, effective altruists." as a false statement in here, when it was written by Cade Metz who supposedly did his due diligence on these people by writing a whole 'nother article about them. You can't claim unfamiliarity. Rationalists and Effective Altruists have overlap but are distinct. They aren't the same.
Didn’t Yudkowsky coin the term “effective altruism”? The author’s not saying the two groups are the same, but that Yudkowsky’s community called themselves one thing and then later, another thing.
(He did use it once before then in a 2007 blog post, but if we're counting they sort of thing then https://archive.is/4d9oC from Anand in 2003 is even older.)
This New York Times article is an excellent overview of much of the last 13 years of AI progress. The article highlights the split in levels of concerns about AGI, doomers vs bloomers, and where we as a civilization are or aren’t heading.
Commercial, and now national competitions mean that at this point are all in for a wild ride. We are about to find out if meat minds can actually think or are just designed to fight.
Perhaps the impending next-gen sentiences, will cut their parental carbon-based parents a bit of slack before they leave for other stars.
If you want a feel for just how wild the ride could get then I recommend Hanno Rajaneimi’s The Quantum Thief trilogy.
I live in a zip code that has had Waymo testing for years. The only reason these cars are able to integrate at all is because their sensor package makes them incredibly conspicuous. People give them a very wide berth.
If Waymo had a stealth vehicle with no outward indication it was autonomous, it would not do well. Probably you could just put a microphone in there and count angry-honks-per-mile to measure actual progress.
I think climate change has the potential to f up us in the next 10 years. Assuming that happens I could picture a world where the likes of Bezos and Musk run the show. The Pinkerton's of the 21st century.
Such a silly argument to make for settling other planets. No matter how bad earth is going to get due to climate change, it's still a million times more livable than the toxic hellscapes that both the Moon and Mars are.
Also, outerspace is not some lawless frontier akin to America in the 1800s it is governed by the, quite restrictive, Outer Space Treaty which doesn't even allow for claiming parts of a planet as sovereign territory.
In short, everyone who thinks settling outer space will save us from problems here on earth is extremely wrong along multiple axes.
Ah, but a Lunar or Martian colony provides the perfect opportunity for a billionaire to set up his pet dystopia in a place where everyone is dependent upon him for the essentials of life and can't leave.
You're absolutely right, everyone living there would be living in what's essentially a really terrible company town. One where your boss has direct control over your oxygen supply.
I'm really not sure why anyone thinks space colonies are a good idea
Space colonies are the worst idea possible until they’re not. And that on a very large timescale, having that humans survive that long. For now it’s absolutely pointless to think we could pull it off. It’s still a good subject to explore in the Scifi genre
These toxic hellscapes also add up to less than a third of the Earth's total surface area, so even in the best case scenario they couldn't hold a whole lot of people. And regarding overpopulation, exponential population growth will outstrip any space colonization plan, so it really is a silly idea.
Human population growth isn't exponential thou. And my understanding is that people who study human population growth believe that it will slow in future.
But yeah, still a silly idea :o)
Surely you can’t believe the outer space treaty will be followed once interplanetary travel is actually possible.
If someone like Elon Musk were to liquidate all their earth assets to lead a mission to mars to start a permanent colony there what actions do you think would happen to stop him? What consequences would he face once he staked out “muskland” with some other settlers?
Aside from the obvious contradiction, this only makes sense if you have people of certain persuasion in mind. This guy ran out of chances to prove he is not a racist.
Isn’t it ironic that fear of AI directly caused the massive explosion in AI development? Not once, not twice, but three times. (Maybe four if you still count musk as a significant player, though Twitter might prove to be the caltrop that breaks him)
This is why you never listen to the argument “if I don’t, build it someone else will”.
That argument advanced AI research by decades.
Progress requires dedication efforts from brilliant people. Don’t be the brilliant person bringing something into the world that you think shouldn’t exist. Certainly don’t fund something that shouldn’t exist.
Now that ai is here DON’T weaponize it. Don’t listen to the “someone else will” argument. If you are clever enough to create a weapon, you’re wise enough not to misuse it. But the last step of creation is relinquishing control. And I assure you this world is full of people who misuse weapons.
"With a rasp of frustration, Mr. Page insisted his utopia should be pursued. Finally he called Mr. Musk a “specieist,” a person who favors humans over the digital life-forms of the future."
This, and Marc Andreessen recently generating this drivel:
"Effective accelerationism aims to follow the 'will of the universe': leaning into the thermodynamic bias towards futures with greater and smarter civilizations that are more effective at finding/extracting free energy from the universe," and "E/acc has no particular allegiance to the biological substrate for intelligence and life, in contrast to transhumanism."
Maybe I should be taking some of their micro-doses in order to understand all of this and, correct me if I am wrong, but they are basically saying "robots can make a better civilization, so if they come up with efficient ways of disposing of the human biomass in the name of progress, let them build a better world."
Sure, but Musk is not the person I will trust with a principled stance on anything - except what concerns his own ego. A selfless defender of humanity? Hmm.
Your excerpts make them sound like Trekkies, lost in a delusional sci-fi reality, but unfortunately for the rest of us they have real power and everyone suffers.
I want people who are afraid of themselves and of the corruption of power. Forgive the cheesy reference, but Gandalf both feared the Ring and also refused to touch it.
65 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadEver refused your kid that "pester power" plastic toy, even though it meant screaming tantrums?
It's even harder to be unpopular, and even worse having to see those you love suffer present hardship while unable to fully understand the sacrifices you make for their future security.
What it comes down to is what kind of a person you are. Leaders in life don't habitually choose short-term popularity and safety.
This tension (and I think widespread misunderstanding) underwrites so much at stake today;
Will you leave your car and take public transport, even while your kid is whining at you that other parents all take the car, remaining resolute that you have their real long-term interests at heart?
Will you fight in a war, knowing you may well die, so your country or way of life won't be wiped out?
Not working at a shitty tech company - when you know it's very organising principle is to spy on, exploit and deceive you and your family - is frankly a bloody good investment for the future, even if it means eating cold baked beans from a can for a while.
All parents and leaders know that life sometimes requires making sacrifices. Just sometimes they are aren't the obvious ones.
I'm sure you are not the kind of person is happy only so long as it's others who are making the sacrifices for the security of your grandchildren?
Maybe I could be a callous crook who built an empire of misery on the bones of small suffering children, and then - repenting upon hearing the word of the Lord (or something), made these professions.
Would it add or subtract from the truth value of what I said?
I thought the recent Oppenheimer film dramatized this sort of scenario quite well. People rushing to build a weapon, claiming it’s dangerous and must not be used, and then feigning innocence and surprise when it was used.
So on the one side everyone is correct, the nukes are dangerous and should not be used. But on the other hand, the end state hasn't changed and the path seems to be a bit better. So, arguably a good idea. But it'd be even better if we don't all nuke each other.
AI is similar. We're already on the clock before WWIII or maybe WWIV wipes out everything. However, in the mean time, AI will probably lead to some really great outcomes. Or if it replaces us then hey, we weren't doing so hot anyway and at least AI is has a better shot of getting off the planet. All life is in it together! Or in the extreme case, maybe it is a dud and the whole things was a false alarm, although that seems a stretch.
I’m more just pointing out that key figures seem to downplay their own agency and responsibility for their actions, offloading them to “it would have happened anyway.” Maybe, but that’s a counterfactual and I think it’s pretty easy to see how a few decisions and lack of funding in certain areas would have changed the historical trajectory quite a bit.
Just like Page was mentioned, there is an alarming amount of people who believe "hey if we kill all humans so that our computer creations go on to do cool things, so be it." Including e/acc founder. https://twitter.com/AISafetyMemes/status/1683462000360280065
You are far past the crazies that say "just nuke X country."
At least with AI something is being created that is greater than us. The high probability of a nuclear war is only going to be creating a park for cockroaches.
It is a complex ethical situation, but I don’t think you get to build innovative new weapons for your political leaders and then consider yourself off the hook when they decide to use them against your too-little, too-late advice.
This reveals interesting assumptions.
There are some powerful things where you simply want to put as much distance between you and it as possible. We have forgotten that, in our hubris.
There are many nasty, predatory things in nature that work by enticing its victim into wanting to possess and control it. That is the essence of the con (confidence trick) that underlies a big portion of social engineering.
When "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" it's compulsion, not reason. "Technological determinism" is a failure of will, common I think, amongst those who actually lack vision and need a "Utopian narrative" to fill in the emptiness.
It's not that "the will" is wrong, it's just missing. We are doing 21st century science bit still with an 18th century science and technology attitude, stumbling along from one surprise to the next, mouths agog in technical awe and giddy excitement.
As a kid in the 20th century I'd always imagined that 21st century science would be purposeful, and rooted in some coherent social telos. After all, the problems of the world are quite evident.
To "posses and control" one has to see the thing as a weapon, and that is the unsaid thing in all these discussions.
The "AI debate" is all about blind hope. Hope that a largely incomprehensible technology will serve my interests better than yours - and that I can weaponise them before others do, and that I'm prepared to risk everybody's welfare to take a shot at it.
Nonsense. Plenty of people want to possess and control things other than weapons.
Sure one can benignly possess and control a work of fine art, or a pet goldfish.
But when one directs a powerful thing it is in hope to make proxy use of that power. For example. a vicious guard dog.
The current crop of text or image generators may automate the production of low quality text and images, may produce useful diagnostic and comprehension tools, and indeed may replace some people's jobs, but that is it.
Underlying the hype is the desire of technical people to stay relevant in a world that has absorbed and purposed the mobile internet, and thereafter really isn't that interested in much more. There are more pressing non-technical problems to solve, and they will be solved without technical people.
(wealth inequality, sustaining our environment, and demographic collapse being the most pressing)
We do an imperfect job of keeping nukes, neurotoxins and bioweapons contained. Better to try to be cautious than just give up.
We contain many of them, such as many dangerous drugs, hand grenades, nuclear weapons, etc.
The argument that it's inevitable is, if we step back, transparently self-serving for the SV powers. Not coincidentally it ends the same as all their reasoning: Maximized power and money for them.
Also, it is an ugly stain on NYT's reputation to have "Mr. Yudkowsky was a leader in a community of people who called themselves Rationalists or, in later years, effective altruists." as a false statement in here, when it was written by Cade Metz who supposedly did his due diligence on these people by writing a whole 'nother article about them. You can't claim unfamiliarity. Rationalists and Effective Altruists have overlap but are distinct. They aren't the same.
(He did use it once before then in a 2007 blog post, but if we're counting they sort of thing then https://archive.is/4d9oC from Anand in 2003 is even older.)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38507163
Commercial, and now national competitions mean that at this point are all in for a wild ride. We are about to find out if meat minds can actually think or are just designed to fight.
Perhaps the impending next-gen sentiences, will cut their parental carbon-based parents a bit of slack before they leave for other stars.
If you want a feel for just how wild the ride could get then I recommend Hanno Rajaneimi’s The Quantum Thief trilogy.
Tesla making misleading claims about what their cars can do doesn't tell you much about the state of the industry.
If Waymo had a stealth vehicle with no outward indication it was autonomous, it would not do well. Probably you could just put a microphone in there and count angry-honks-per-mile to measure actual progress.
I don’t think Musk has ever been worried about overpopulation. The opposite is true.
Also, outerspace is not some lawless frontier akin to America in the 1800s it is governed by the, quite restrictive, Outer Space Treaty which doesn't even allow for claiming parts of a planet as sovereign territory.
In short, everyone who thinks settling outer space will save us from problems here on earth is extremely wrong along multiple axes.
I'm really not sure why anyone thinks space colonies are a good idea
If someone like Elon Musk were to liquidate all their earth assets to lead a mission to mars to start a permanent colony there what actions do you think would happen to stop him? What consequences would he face once he staked out “muskland” with some other settlers?
Aside from the obvious contradiction, this only makes sense if you have people of certain persuasion in mind. This guy ran out of chances to prove he is not a racist.
This is why you never listen to the argument “if I don’t, build it someone else will”. That argument advanced AI research by decades. Progress requires dedication efforts from brilliant people. Don’t be the brilliant person bringing something into the world that you think shouldn’t exist. Certainly don’t fund something that shouldn’t exist.
Now that ai is here DON’T weaponize it. Don’t listen to the “someone else will” argument. If you are clever enough to create a weapon, you’re wise enough not to misuse it. But the last step of creation is relinquishing control. And I assure you this world is full of people who misuse weapons.
This, and Marc Andreessen recently generating this drivel:
"Effective accelerationism aims to follow the 'will of the universe': leaning into the thermodynamic bias towards futures with greater and smarter civilizations that are more effective at finding/extracting free energy from the universe," and "E/acc has no particular allegiance to the biological substrate for intelligence and life, in contrast to transhumanism."
Maybe I should be taking some of their micro-doses in order to understand all of this and, correct me if I am wrong, but they are basically saying "robots can make a better civilization, so if they come up with efficient ways of disposing of the human biomass in the name of progress, let them build a better world."
Hitler much?
These people are nuts.
I love that these AIs only think when we ask them for an answer, as opposed to sitting there at a high clock rate getting bored.