31–40 of 99 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So for you the solution is not to dismantle a model like that one but just accept it and displace the quasi-slaves? I swear you people have lost your fucking mind and will push people to violence
> but just accept it and displace the quasi-slaves? Well, the quasi-slavery is the problem, right? And replacing the Bangladeshi slave labor with robots and AI solves that problem, no?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have no idea what socialism is, like so many right wing propagandists and dynastic-autocracy labor-exploitation rentier-state apologists. That's not socialism. It's an absolute autocratic monarchy distributing oil rents to a privileged citizen caste. Most of the private-sector work is done by foreign workers who don't receive the same benefits or political rights.
Socialism is state ownership of the means of production. The governance of that state, be it democratic, monarchical, or dictatorship of the proletariat, is a separate question.
State ownership alone isn't sufficient. If a hereditary ruling family controls the state, then "state ownership" just means ownership by that ruling elite, not by society.
It's possible that human morality is not sufficient to solve the problems with the world. It wasn't designed to operate at that scale.
It's also quite likely that a "superior" morality — the one that's actually built for a global scale — would be incomprehensible (likely requiring superintelligence to even access), and alien or disturbing from our vantage point.
i.e. it would look immoral to us.
(There's also the thing about civilization already being aligned against the ecosystem and against the happiness of its constituents, but that's kind of a separate discussion.)
In other words, what is good for our sanity or our lakes may be bad for GDP. (Well I guess you don't need superintelligence to tell you that.) We already know what we need to do and we're already not willing to do it.
We thought it was a waste of time because the 1990s were relatively peaceful and tech optimism surged.
But you need to teach the classics, philosophy and even religion. No tech people should be allowed near politics in any capacity.
> Since they believe AIs could become our moral superiors, they argue it’s actually wrong to try to keep the machines down, or even to align them with human values, as most AI companies aim to do. It's possible that human morality is not sufficient to solve the problems with the world. It wasn't designed to operate at that scale. It's also quite likely that a "superior" morality — the one that's actually built for a…
> i.e. it would look immoral to us.
I doubt it actually solves the problem then. Especially because I would be willingly to bet it would be almost impossible to get large enough groups of people to agree what the actual problem is.
This assumes that “more intelligence” is the objective. Higher intelligence does not imply better values, and even “better values” depends on whose moral framework gets encoded.
Having a wide breadth of knowledge and the ability to consider it tends to provide a good foundation of perspectives for positive values.
Most harms that people do are through some form of ignorance. Either by not comprehending the consequences of their actions or by not knowing better ways to express themselves.
Geoffrey Hinton mentions that Humans are more intelligent than animals, and we keep animals in cages. The counterpoint is that the intelligent people who know the most about those animals are the ones who work the hardest to have those animals in cages moved to more suitable environments.
Maybe we should first try to understand consciousness and qualia, and build an AI that we are absolutely sure is enjoying the work it is doing.
“Listen,” said Ford, who was still engrossed in the sales brochure, “they make a big thing of the ship's cybernetics. A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP feature.” “GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What's that?” “Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.” “Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.” A voice behind them said, “It is.” The voice was low and hopeless and accompan…
There are a few related concepts being conflated here.
The quote above is a Transhumanist position; they think that humans need to evolve. I don’t think most transhumanists are AI successionists, though one path is “merge with AI” whatever you think that means. Genetic engineering being the other obvious path. You could argue in some sense that “post-humans” succeed humans, but I think most would argue for a gradual transition where it feels more continuous and values are transmitted/preserved somewhat.
e/acc just says “accelerate AI”. Many VCs seem to think AI will remain a tool, they don’t want to be dethroned. Some e/acc are of course successionist, this is Musk and Beff with their talk about “all that matters is the light of intelligence is spread through the universe”.
Conflating all this is the fact that true successionism is way outside the Overton window and so people likely won’t be honest about their wishes. Larry Page famously espoused the view that it was “speciesist” for Musk to not want machines to replace humans. Most people find this position repugnant of course.