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On AI regulation and messaging

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Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have not seen anything if many other see it as substantial ground, and you just say "I don't see anything", how do you think this discussion can go forward?

Obviously with someone actually sharing what convinced them Amodei is a bad person and a liar? It's amazing that I even have to ask for it, as if I am just supposed to believe so. Alternatively, one could also engage with my argument that Amodei's position seems consistent with his beliefs, and point out flaws with it.

I scrolled through 5 layers of parent comments, and didn't see mentioned he is a liar. Also, its usually hard to draw line between lie and manipulation.

As for "bad person" is concept you brought to discussion, it could mean many things, but you were provided with enough ground from opposite point of view.

> It's amazing that I even have to ask for it, as if I am just supposed to believe so.

toxicity only adds to your character of bias and denial.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to famine and poverty is not exactly a mystery. We have more than enough food on the planet for everyone, and we have the ability to deliver bombs or soldiers or amazon packages to anywhere in the world in days or hours. Combine excess food with amazon or army level logistics, and famine is gone. What people mean when they say “solve famine” is can we make people not starve without actually doing or chan…

> Combine excess food with amazon or army level logistics, and famine is gone. We do this. Have you ever heard of UN World Food Programme? $14B funding in 2022 (since then dropped drastically, guess why). Has it solved famine? No. Would it solve famine if it got the funding it needs? Unlikely. Because you cannot just spend billions of dollars to send amazin food parcels across the world and expect that to fix climate…

The UN estimates it would cost $93 billion a year to end world hunger (https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/11/1166397)

So one would expect $14b/year would solve about 14/93 = 15% of world hunger.

> The World Food Programme supports over 152 million people annually and delivers life-saving food assistance where needed most. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Programme)

An estimated 757 million people are food insecure (https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stub...)

152/757 = the world food program helps ~20% of people who are food insecure. That's well in the ballpark of the estimated 15% spend.

If we spend that extra $93b, we'd be well within the range to actually stop world hunger.

Yes, "climate change, draught, poverty, colonialism, racism, illiteracy, lack of education" are still issues. No, you don't have to solve those problems to feed people. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#474

> I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust. I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over. [...] > I don’t think that a glitzy marketing campaign with a positive spin (which some have advocated that Anthropic do) is the way to win back that trust — at this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is mo…

> The thing that will work is actually curing cancer. This is honestly hilarious. Dario must think people are stupid. First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet. They all obtain donations on the basis of "together, we will cure cancer" messaging. They all fund the best science they can. Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks a…

This is why this hype is so annoying - they have to make claims and goals like this to justify the current level of investment. It couldn't be like "ok, we have this cool tool that can sorta code and do computer stuff and automate things" and be a $50 billion dollar company, no, we have to shoot much, much higher, so high that I think the only inevitability is this all collapses in on itself in a financial black hole, which is a shame.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#475
I don’t think it’s a messaging problem or a trust problem. I think it’s that the world AI boosters want to create is one that most people don’t want to live in. “You will be fundamentally without agency or purpose, and people you don’t like will shape the world you live in forever according to their whims” sounds bad to most people. Having cures for disease so that I can live longer in a world that I’d rather not live in at all doesn’t sound like a good trade.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one to AGI with enough compute to run the AI wins it all. Humans will not be able to compete.

If Anthropic is the first to develop AGI, then everyone else becomes subordinate to Dario Amodei? And if DeepSeek is the first to get there, everyone instead becomes subordinate to Liang Wenfeng? I cannot believe that there is a threshold of intelligence where getting there first means a decisive and durable advantage. If you do believe that getting there first means ruling the world, then our viewpoints are probably…

It depends what you mean by 'subordinate' -- but even a small but persistent advantage in decision making compounds, so I can't imagine that someone getting that advantage doesn't use it to kill their competition.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously with someone actually sharing what convinced them Amodei is a bad person and a liar? It's amazing that I even have to ask for it, as if I am just supposed to believe so. Alternatively, one could also engage with my argument that Amodei's position seems consistent with his beliefs, and point out flaws with it.

I scrolled through 5 layers of parent comments, and didn't see mentioned he is a liar. Also, its usually hard to draw line between lie and manipulation. As for "bad person" is concept you brought to discussion, it could mean many things, but you were provided with enough ground from opposite point of view. > It's amazing that I even have to ask for it, as if I am just supposed to believe so. toxicity only adds to you…

[deleted]

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dario must think people are stupid. All of those guys think people are stupid. That theme has been repeating over and over again.

Donald Trump still maintains a 39% approval rating among the electorate. It turns out that a lot of people are indeed quite stupid.

There's a reasonably high floor here it seems you can't realistically do anything to drop below. Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_app...

Nixon was 24% when he resigned, which is amusingly not actually the lowest, as Truman seems to have twice achieved a spot rating of 22, though Nixon remains the lowest rating for a full year. I wonder what Truman did to be less liked than Nixon. Those were both well after dropping bombs on Japan and before the first H-bomb test.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#479
post #390

> I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust. I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over. [...] > I don’t think that a glitzy marketing campaign with a positive spin (which some have advocated that Anthropic do) is the way to win back that trust — at this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is mo…

> Turns out "winning back trust" doesn't have anything to do with any actual concerns people may have re: employment, electricity prices, stock market bubble, intellectual property, scams, cybersecurity, environmental issues etc No snark here from my side, just curious about your vision - which concrete actions by Anthropic could improve trust for the concerns you listed?

Well, is ”not actively make things worse in the short term?” too ambitious a goal?

Considering the vast amount of money, world-class talent and political and industry vonnections Anthropic has access to, it feels a bit unfair to ask me to solve this for them.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#480
What is the lesswrong-crowd answer to the non-existential risk to working people?

I'm way more worried about these guys breaking the economy in such a way that enriches them and makes me poorer, than I'm about any existential risk these guys cook up in their thought experiments.

Like if you are making more money than god in silicon valley I guess you don't really fear losing your job or house, but for most people that would be quite bad.

I never hear these guys articulate what their concrete vision for the economy if they make ASI / AGI happen (one of those is the correct shibboleth and I don't remember which).

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