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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. But. I imagine the others did not fail to learn from this.
What evidence would falsify this idea that wealth alone gives you political power?
This is brilliant, except for the "alignment won't stop this part". > Now, some people believe these machines can be made to serve humanity. Does it sound reasonable to imagine a superhumanly intelligent being that is happy to work as a butler to talking primates, forever? The whole crux of the piece to me is that the AI can be 100% aligned to follow human instructions, and we'd still end up unable to control the AI…
Sometimes you can be in a situation where every actor taking locally-rational actions leads to globally catastrophic outcomes. It would be easy to argue I think that the July Crisis was like this: if you look at the incentives of each player, they had many reasons to do what they did, and nobody can perfectly what all other players will do, or what the future holds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At this point I'm like, if it happens it happens. There's no point caring because I'm the equivalent of an ant in the grand scheme of things.
There's got to be something we can do though...
The premise is a bit of a stretch to begin with, and the idea that people would not believe a fable transcript circa 2020 (as long as explained as 5 year future tech) is absurd. But even if I take that "AI can do all cognitive and physical work, at human level or better, and cheaper than humans" is true, the article seems to silently layer on "and can run autonomously, indefinitely", then "can also operate independen…
Also consider: if "AI can do all cognitive and physical work, at human level or better", doesn't that simply entail the AI being able to run 'autonomously, indefinitely' and 'independently of instructions' in the same way as the current state of being run by human overseers?
If we take the initial premise as plausible, for the sake of this argument his thesis seems to hold together very well.
The premise is a bit of a stretch to begin with, and the idea that people would not believe a fable transcript circa 2020 (as long as explained as 5 year future tech) is absurd. But even if I take that "AI can do all cognitive and physical work, at human level or better, and cheaper than humans" is true, the article seems to silently layer on "and can run autonomously, indefinitely", then "can also operate independen…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's got to be something we can do though...
of course there’s things we could do on a societal level. nothing’s actually inevitable. but we won’t do anything, because the normative argument (we’re condemning people to die of cancer if we don’t put all our resources into the fastest possible AI development) will win every time.
Historically, ruling classes often maintain power without directly producing anything themselves.
But does that mean this internal unease will persist forever? Look at the MAGA base right now. The vast majority of them are poor. They vote based on their communal religious beliefs and their sense of community. The MAGA support base is demonstrably poor, yet they still wield influence.
And there's an internal contradiction within the text:
-AI CEOs follow the orders of new owners.
-Superintelligent AI has no reason to obey humans.
These two statements contradict each other. If superintelligent AI has broken free from human control, why would it follow its owner's orders? And I'm also curious about the assumption that AI wouldn't be better than humans at 'farming' us.
So if superintelligent AI decides humans are bad, it might exterminate us. But what if it decides it needs humans and starts 'farming' us instead?
And I wonder whether superintelligent AI would actually find conversation with humans boring.
Humans and AI are obviously different species. One is made of organic matter, the other inorganic. A person with a biological body and an AI with an inorganic body will be different. Whether AI will observe this difference or deem it meaningless, I think it's still hard to judge.
And fast decisions aren't always the answer. Take infrastructure as an example. New York's boiler infrastructure isn't very efficient. But it was once a cutting-edge system. In other words, it was installed as the first advanced system of its time, but once its flaws were discovered, the infrastructure became difficult to replace. That's why cities developed later often have better infrastructure efficiency.
Take the East as another example. Japan introduced railways and power grids first, so there are aging costs where the infrastructure can't keep up with newer systems. Setting aside the narrow-gauge rail issue, take the most obvious example: electricity. Japan's 110V system was innovative at the time, but it ended up causing problems with EV charging, it's aging, and transmission efficiency is low. In the end, you can't say that rushing into decisions is always the right call.
- large scale geopolitical demographic collapse of China and/or world trade requiring massive industrial production investment, which would be ... sort of ... like post-WWII
- China does not collapse and a new bipolar cold war ensues requiring the US economy and state to keep the "underclass" motivated and cooperative: it probably isn't a coincidence that the fall of the Berlin Wall has preceded this rich-poor divide.
FTA: "And who will stop this? Sam Altman? How many divisions does he have? The state doesn’t let corporations own nuclear weapons or fighter jets, it won’t let them have access to autonomous AI weapons either." Elon Musk's SpaceX. He could land a large rocket wherever he wants, it's basically a missile.
Then the FBI raids his home and arrests him. Thereafter, no more rockets.
He got a guy elected that was conducive to his world view and very unlikely to sic the FBI on him. Maybe he can do it again.