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Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

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Re: Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

#131

Palantir CEO Alex Karp has rejected calls to pause the development of artificial intelligence (AI), stating that it is only those with “no products” who want a pause. Karp believes that the West currently holds key commercial and military advantages in AI and should not relinquish them.

Somehow reading "The West" made me think their "enemy" is the Russians, and now I'm thinking of RussianGPT. Version 1 is a depressed literary figure who likes to talk heavy stuff. Version 2 is basically Baghdad Bob declaring victory in the face of loses.

Meanwhile version 2 has also been found in many places, like Mar-a-Lago and 10 Downing St, London.

Re: Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fact that Palantir is a criminal organization is plainly true and certainly substantive. Perhaps it's plainly true in some trivial sense (all large orgs have committed some crimes), but not in any legally-relevant sense. Otherwise people have to explain the obvious incongruity between this "plain truth" and the obvious fact that Palantir is not facing the sort of legal problems that would be expected of a "crimi…

Between this and your "well actually AI Armageddon is a more urgent danger than addressing climate crisis" comment I'm starting to think you're peter thiel's burner account

Yes, you got me. I'm actually Peter Thiel and I'm really an AI Doomer but I'm hiding that in my public pronouncements because I'm willing to shave years off my life expectancy to ensure that I die while I'm as rich as possible.

Re: Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also we have to solve climate change without using any fancy-shmancy geoengineering, because as sinners we're obligated to suffer rather than have convenient solutions for our problems.

Or maybe the only kind of geo engineering that is feasible comes with unknowns that people are reasonably suspicous of; especially when it would likely be carried out by profit making entites. If you want to suck co2 out of the air, no one will have issue with it, you will just run out of money without making a dent.

Deindustrialization also comes with plenty of unknowns that people are reasonably suspicious of.

Re: Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be considered part of the US military industrial complex and people largely object to it for the same reasons they would object to Raytheon or Lockheed Martin being involved with something. Palantir obviously operates on a different layer, but it still provides support for the military operations of the US. Of course that should not be controversial for Airbus, which themselves operate military industry and…

Lots of very fine reasoning when it comes to “provid[ing] support for the military operations of the US.” Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all have substantial sales to the DoD. Part of the military industrial complex? What about Uber, Hilton, AB InBev, and Coca-Cola? What about Harvard and Yale? What about White House staffers?

>Part of the military industrial complex?

I would say absolutely yes. All these companies make US military operations possible.

>What about Uber, Hilton, AB InBev, and Coca-Cola?

Not really. If they are used at all, they are used incidentally so. Certainly the military does not need them.

>What about Harvard and Yale?

Difficult question. I tend towards yes.

>What about White House staffers?

Depends I think.

Re: Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

#135
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easiest? Perhaps. Certainly the default if nothing else were to happen. But between PV, vat-grown meat, the fact other edibles like Quorn and yeast and Spirulina are on old-news vat-grown foods, etc. I'm focussing most of my attention on the killer robots that want to maximise shareholder value by ${insert any of a bajillion examples of how almost any goal expressed in natural language has a literal interpretation th…

The interlocutor here in this scenario isn’t “AI,” it is, as always, unfettered capitalism. I’m all down for regulation and forcing AI companies, as the others, to pay for the externalities the enforce on us. It isn’t a rogue language model that it suddenly going to brute force it’s way to sentience and kill us all; it’s billionaire tech companies with profit motivations. That they can point the finger to a computer…

> The interlocutor here in this scenario isn’t “AI,” it is, as always, unfettered capitalism.

One of them is.

AI also enables every conversation to be transcribed and indexed in a way that would make the Stasi envious.

This is because evil isn't limited to fat-cats twirling moustaches — such villains are just the easy-to-spot examples in the modern world because the big scary Communists fell on their faces decades ago.

> it’s billionaire tech companies with profit motivations

Could be. Could also be the next Pol Pot.

Did the PRC's Great Leap Forward cause such death on purpose, or by accident? Were Stalin and Sir Robert Peel malicious or incompetent with the Holomodor and the Great Famine of Ireland respectively?

Re: Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also we have to solve climate change without using any fancy-shmancy geoengineering, because as sinners we're obligated to suffer rather than have convenient solutions for our problems.

Others downvoted you but I think you’re right to link Puritanism to a specific sliver of climate change activist community. There are some zealots who think we must end modernity as we know it, now!, or all is lost. These people existed before climate change, they just used other arguments to back their agenda. It was over population or before that a fear of factories, industry, progress in pretty much any form. The…

Yeah, I believe in climate change but I think that short-term climate doomerism is a pretty clear stalking horse for the sort of anti-capitalist/anti-industrial sliver that you mention. I guess if I were being charitable I'd say that I could be reversing the causality here and that climate change doomerism was simply causing anti-capitalist beliefs rather than the other way around, but I would bet that this isn't the case, and the reflexive attacks on "easy" solutions to climate change is reflective of this.

Re: Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is key. With climate change maybe we should be alarmed now, but few people argue that human extinction without our lifetimes is a possible outcome of inaction in the current argument. Unfortunately, with AI things are different. By the time humans notice a real problem, we may be months if not hours away from death.

Anything to distract from the climate crisis huh Mac

Just like the climate crisis is a distraction from the "no 2nd season of Firefly" crisis, sure.

Re: Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

#139
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Palantir is a criminal organization is plainly true and certainly substantive.

>The fact that Palantir is a criminal organization is plainly true and certainly substantive. Perhaps it's plainly true in some trivial sense (all large orgs have committed some crimes), but not in any legally-relevant sense. Otherwise people have to explain the obvious incongruity between this "plain truth" and the obvious fact that Palantir is not facing the sort of legal problems that would be expected of a "crimi…

It’s not true in a trivial sense it’s true in a deep and legally relevant sense. The company is a major accomplice in the blatantly illegal mass surveillance of Americans.

This isn’t like a big conspiracy theory people have won Pulitzer Prizes over it and all that.

It’s a completely reasonably inference that this person advocating for fewer restrictions on a powerful new technology is hoping to use it to conduct more sophisticated mass surveillance on Americans.

As I said, nothing could be more substantive to this thread.

Re: Palantir CEO Rejects Calls to Pause AI Development

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is key. With climate change maybe we should be alarmed now, but few people argue that human extinction without our lifetimes is a possible outcome of inaction in the current argument. Unfortunately, with AI things are different. By the time humans notice a real problem, we may be months if not hours away from death.

How do you envision this AI caused extinction happening?

Here's an influential article on the subject: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a...

The basic idea is that once AGI hits an unknown capability threshold it will likely recursively self-improve into something very dangerous and difficult to control, and will likely be able to come up with an effective plan to remove any obstacles to its intended desires, ie. humans.

People have varying degrees of confidence in this scenario, but even if you peg it at like a 10% likelihood you're basically conceding that it's the single most important policy issue in the current political climate.

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