Breaking/escaping containment is evocative. I think of Lenin escaping Marx, and anarchism more generally -- the 19th and early 20th century versions that preached assassination as a way to shake up (and shake down) hierarchy. Modern precision bombing used to assassinate heads of states and the like has similar hopes, to bring regime change.
If you actually believe we are on the verge of superintelligent AI, and that it’s likely to go Skynet on us, why call for nonviolence? Logically one should kill every person in the world working on AI. Fortunately, I think the dangers are overblown. But if I really believed it, I’d do violence.
Just because we can, doesn't mean we should, but I agree, we did.
It was inevitable when we turned on the lights, so to speak, which btw officially happened at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. Watch the Current Wars, it's a nice look into the birth of the electric age. Regardless, I agree there will be more violence, but that's because I believe the transition is hard on our brains, causing literal brain damage, which often shows up as violence and deep conspiratorial thinking. Add to that a blatant disregard for males, especially white males, in society at large as well as the various drugs we gave them as kids to keep them in their seats at school, alas, we're in for a bumpy ride. The male desire to be the white knight is a strong archetype at the heart of the hero's journey. Bombing Sam Altman, stopping Trump, stopping AI, what lost boy wouldn't want to wear that mantle? Just some rando coffee thoughts this morning.
AI is a symptom of the deepening monetary sickness of fiat currency that has been going on since Nixon abandoned the gold peg.
Under quantitative easing, the American economy runs on the principle of “the Fed creates trillions of paper dollars out of thin air —> gives it to their friends.” Without this extremely perverse (and undoubtedly soon to expire) economic system, I doubt AI companies would be economically viable.
I can't tell you how many times I've said, only half-kidding, "It's over," in response to an AI-related story from the past year. It's the serious half that I think about most.
Today, right now, AI doomerism still seems like an overreaction to most people. Even people who understand it intellectually believe that we'll always have some kind of fail-safe, or that it will always remain a mere tool, just as every invention up to now has been. But guns and bombs are also tools. So is social media. Something being a "tool" doesn't preclude it from being destructive.
And, even more, AI and related technologies seem *qualitatively* different from everything that has led up to this moment--even when compared to something as transformative as the World Wide Web or the transistor radio, for example.
Which is why, this logic goes, we must have a fail-safe. But there can be no fail-safe against human nature. The desire for more. More progress. More exploration. More money.
So, today, right now, we find ourselves in a fleeting moment when the novelty and possibility of AI drowns out the deceptive murmur of its most frightening aspects. I know it will likely virtually eliminate my entire *sector* within a decade. Long before then, it will profoundly change it. Perhaps within two years (this part has already begun).
Yet, at the same time, I love making silly little 10-to-20-second videos to taunt and amuse the members of my fantasy football league.
I, too, am human.
Thus, knowing full well my own grave lies under my feet, I continue to shovel.
We have tons of fail-safe a against human nature! That we are still here is proof of that. Not only are we still here, we have thrived and progressed over time.
I really don't get where all this self-hate comes from. I mean I get it, we are terrible, but the story doesn't end there!
We are also — how does one of my favourite Doctors say it? — brilliant! Maybe more like BRILLIANT! yeah.
"AI" is a wonderful way to explore whatever this is we inhabit. Technology, if you will, is a great tool— and even more than that, a super-cool philosophical deal! (Thinking itself is a tool!)
Maybe that is part of it. The thinking being seen as a danger, that is. "We should fear intelligence because intelligence is powerful and powerful means dangerous." type of deal.
Except the definitions for these thinks [typo but I'm keeping it] keep escaping us (I do not believe this is coincidence). What is intelligence? What is it to be conscious? What is it to be both an individual and a member of groups? How does 1 become 2 and 2 become 1? Where does 3 fit in? (Like on a deep set theory level.). *What is identity?*
We've been able to blow ourselves up for a long time. Maybe it is pure luck that we have not. There is no way to know, theoretically (basically because of "sets", and having insides and outsides, etc.—but also an entire host of reasons, which I gotta say makes the whole thing kinda sus 😋).
I was going to quote FDR, but instead I'll rock a JFK: "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."
great work
Breaking/escaping containment is evocative. I think of Lenin escaping Marx, and anarchism more generally -- the 19th and early 20th century versions that preached assassination as a way to shake up (and shake down) hierarchy. Modern precision bombing used to assassinate heads of states and the like has similar hopes, to bring regime change.
If you actually believe we are on the verge of superintelligent AI, and that it’s likely to go Skynet on us, why call for nonviolence? Logically one should kill every person in the world working on AI. Fortunately, I think the dangers are overblown. But if I really believed it, I’d do violence.
Just because we can, doesn't mean we should, but I agree, we did.
It was inevitable when we turned on the lights, so to speak, which btw officially happened at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. Watch the Current Wars, it's a nice look into the birth of the electric age. Regardless, I agree there will be more violence, but that's because I believe the transition is hard on our brains, causing literal brain damage, which often shows up as violence and deep conspiratorial thinking. Add to that a blatant disregard for males, especially white males, in society at large as well as the various drugs we gave them as kids to keep them in their seats at school, alas, we're in for a bumpy ride. The male desire to be the white knight is a strong archetype at the heart of the hero's journey. Bombing Sam Altman, stopping Trump, stopping AI, what lost boy wouldn't want to wear that mantle? Just some rando coffee thoughts this morning.
AI is a symptom of the deepening monetary sickness of fiat currency that has been going on since Nixon abandoned the gold peg.
Under quantitative easing, the American economy runs on the principle of “the Fed creates trillions of paper dollars out of thin air —> gives it to their friends.” Without this extremely perverse (and undoubtedly soon to expire) economic system, I doubt AI companies would be economically viable.
I can't tell you how many times I've said, only half-kidding, "It's over," in response to an AI-related story from the past year. It's the serious half that I think about most.
Today, right now, AI doomerism still seems like an overreaction to most people. Even people who understand it intellectually believe that we'll always have some kind of fail-safe, or that it will always remain a mere tool, just as every invention up to now has been. But guns and bombs are also tools. So is social media. Something being a "tool" doesn't preclude it from being destructive.
And, even more, AI and related technologies seem *qualitatively* different from everything that has led up to this moment--even when compared to something as transformative as the World Wide Web or the transistor radio, for example.
Which is why, this logic goes, we must have a fail-safe. But there can be no fail-safe against human nature. The desire for more. More progress. More exploration. More money.
So, today, right now, we find ourselves in a fleeting moment when the novelty and possibility of AI drowns out the deceptive murmur of its most frightening aspects. I know it will likely virtually eliminate my entire *sector* within a decade. Long before then, it will profoundly change it. Perhaps within two years (this part has already begun).
Yet, at the same time, I love making silly little 10-to-20-second videos to taunt and amuse the members of my fantasy football league.
I, too, am human.
Thus, knowing full well my own grave lies under my feet, I continue to shovel.
We have tons of fail-safe a against human nature! That we are still here is proof of that. Not only are we still here, we have thrived and progressed over time.
I really don't get where all this self-hate comes from. I mean I get it, we are terrible, but the story doesn't end there!
We are also — how does one of my favourite Doctors say it? — brilliant! Maybe more like BRILLIANT! yeah.
"AI" is a wonderful way to explore whatever this is we inhabit. Technology, if you will, is a great tool— and even more than that, a super-cool philosophical deal! (Thinking itself is a tool!)
Maybe that is part of it. The thinking being seen as a danger, that is. "We should fear intelligence because intelligence is powerful and powerful means dangerous." type of deal.
Except the definitions for these thinks [typo but I'm keeping it] keep escaping us (I do not believe this is coincidence). What is intelligence? What is it to be conscious? What is it to be both an individual and a member of groups? How does 1 become 2 and 2 become 1? Where does 3 fit in? (Like on a deep set theory level.). *What is identity?*
We've been able to blow ourselves up for a long time. Maybe it is pure luck that we have not. There is no way to know, theoretically (basically because of "sets", and having insides and outsides, etc.—but also an entire host of reasons, which I gotta say makes the whole thing kinda sus 😋).
I was going to quote FDR, but instead I'll rock a JFK: "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."
It's a fucking amazeballs time to exist! WOOHOO!