This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Sam Altman's bad week continues, as a car stopped and appears to have fired a gun at the Russian Hill home of OpenAI’s CEO.
It appears that, if measured by deed, Mr. Altman may be in contention for the title of most hated business executive in the country.
Unless I am profoundly misinformed about the base rate of assassination attempts on tech CEOs, it appears AI anxiety has apparently reached a precipitation point among American youth, to the point where discontent is crystalizing into direct action. I've seen this in my personal life. My youngest brother is a bright kid - top of his class, eagle scout, 1400+ on his SATs as a junior, the whole shebang. He's completely given up on his original goal of going to college for something software-related, and he's not only adrift about what he's going to do with his future, but he's angry about it. I hope he has a support network sufficient to keep him on the right track, but I don't like what I see.
I'm not exactly old, but I'm sure as hell not young either. For those of you who are 25 or under, what does it feel like on the ground right now?
It's interesting to me that, as far as I can tell, right now is when OpenAI is the least impressive relative to competitors ever since they kicked off the modern LLM chatbot era with GPT 3.5 almost half a decade ago, and that's when the most violence against its CEO is happening. Even if, somehow, like a video game boss, his murder caused the complete liquidation of OpenAI and disbursement of the proceeds to his murderer, it's doubtful it would put a meaningful dent in the consequences of LLMs in employment and other societal things.
Last week, there was also someone who filmed himself setting fire to a Kimberly Clark warehouse, having been disgruntled over his low pay. He reportedly explicitly compared himself to Luigi Mangione, and I've noticed at least some significant amount of support for him, by the same sorts of people who also lionized Mangione and support the attempts on Altman's life. I don't know where things are going, but I'm pretty sure that more escalation of this type of behavior will lead to nowhere good, triply so for the least well-off parts of society, and I just hope this is a blip instead of a sign of things to come. I'm not sure what else there is to do to stop it other than ramping up law enforcement and making sure that those convicted of such actions get the harshest punishment possible without martyring them. Which doesn't seem like it'd be enough, though.
The circumstance that he stepped up to crank Moloch's ratchet when Anthropic made a principled stand to not play ball with the War Department probably was a factor. Not only was this a strike in favour of "you can't stop or circumscribe AI, if you try to someone else will just pull ahead" for the game theorists and doomers, it also put Altman in the Trump stooge/useful idiot box for Blue normies.
More options
Context Copy link
I just happened to scroll imgur over the weekend (no account, incognito window), and one in every five posts was a picture of a flaming warehouse and variants on the quote "All you had to do was pay us enough to live." It is likely that activists and foreign social media manipulators are trying to meme it into a movement for low-class vigilante sabotage. It is also likely that among imgur users (who lean young and left) this is actually a message that lands well, and is probably providing inspiration for other young would-be vigilantes.
On the other hand, with the motivation of the culprit explicitly captured on video, the theory of social media toxoplasma predicts that it will garner fewer headlines in the mainstream media than the UHC CEO shooting, where a lot of the story was people being able to speculate and argue over the killer's motivation for a few weeks. On the gripping hand, there is probably a larger population of would-be saboteurs and arsonists than would-be murderers: Leftist activists in general are not familiar enough with guns, and the personal taking of a life is not a line most would cross.
I will admit a degree of sympathy. Having dealt with a family member on UHC, they are absolutely using questionable strategies to cut off care early, and having a friend who recently bought a modest home, banks in that city are now telling potential borrowers that they require a salary of about twice the city's median income before they will authorize a loan for a "starter home" price. (And given that the bank has title on the property as collateral on the loan and requires borrowers to pay for insurance against default if they have insufficient downpayment, that must leave borrowers with a very high risk of default.)
Which leads me to my takeaway: I think the only way to really release the pressure permanently will be is to give in to populist demands and start reforming parts of the economy that are currently set up for rent extraction at the behest of shareholders. Enforcing the anti-monopoly laws already on the books as written would probably be enough to improve many sectors of the economy, especially those where local monopolies are pushing up prices, like homebuilding and dental care. Removing principal-agent conflicts of interests in healthcare (the employer wants to pay for the cheapest plan) would be another good reform. But neither of these will happen. If there has been a single guiding principle since Clinton, it would be that the ruling party will do what is good for shareholders, and enforcing anti-monopoly law would help small businesses at the expense of shareholders. In its stead, I would predict that there will be more security expenditures for high-profile CEOs, at least until the predictive panopticon is complete.
So ... which is it? Populist demands are easily converted (by both sides of the aisle!) into protectionist policies that set up parts of the economy for rent extraction. "You can only build more housing here if it's economically 'inclusionary' enough" gets predictably turned by reality into "you can't build more housing here" and drives up the price of the grandfathered (often literally!) housing stock. People want to "drive housing prices up for people who own their homes" while also making housing prices affordable for people who don't, but that just doesn't compute.
are another example. The ACA caps insurance company profit as a percent of premiums, a policy at least populist enough for Obama to brag about it ... and a policy that inadvertently sets up a huge conflict of interest when insurers are trying to figure out what they should pay out.
Ironically, this sort of "cost-plus contract" malincentive was also fixed in part by Obama, in the context of NASA procurement, when he supported and extended the Commercial Resupply Services contracts and then went beyond them with the Commercial Crew program, in both cases paying for purchases where the seller actually could make more profit by producing results more cheaply. For now we still have to burn $4B a pop for SLS when we want to send humans outside Low Earth Orbit, but we can replace it with a $180M Falcon Heavy launch for things like Europa Clipper.
More options
Context Copy link
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that giving in to populist demands will only make the problem a thousand times worse. Improvements in the economy, particularly in the inequality, seems likely to help, but if it's not done in a way that is credibly completely divorced from the behavior of the Mangiones of the world, it seems only likely to embolden them. Especially since, in the not unlikely case that giving in to populist demands only makes everything worse for the people at the bottom, it will likely cause the Mangione-supporters to double down in the "beatings will continue until morale improves" sort of way that's pretty standard in all politics these days.
More options
Context Copy link
Young lefties on imgur aren't working in warehouses.
Most of the Amazon warehouse employees I know are young , extremely online, and make me look like I'm to the right of Francisco Franco.
Are you thinking union jobs?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm curious to know more about the shooter/would be arsonist, but this strikes me less as "I have a coherent theory of change" and more as "I am angry about my life and want to get vengeance on Sam Altman."
Sam is by far the highest profile leader of a frontier lab. He also unfortunately also has a bit of that Zuckerberg style alienating personality type; if someone starts waxing philosophical about dominating the light cone, it's going to be Altman. This draws all anti-AI activism toward him, even if it was Claude that took your job, not ChatGPT.
He also lives in a large, nice home in a relatively tony area; Amodei lives in a nondescript house in a shitty neighborhood. Someone fire bombing the latter would create more cognitive dissonance.
https://morenogama.substack.com/p/ai-existential-risk-is-real
This is the substack of the firebomber.
According to whom?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sam-altman-openai-daniel-alejandro-moreno-gama-22201211.php
The San Francisco Chronicle.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean the arsonist is known at this point to be an adherent to the Pause/Stop AI movement, they were active in the Discord and iirc their Instagram bio or handle references Dune’s Butlerian jihad. So I would lean towards that guy having at least directed his outrage in a fairly reasonable fashion given his views. I think he severely overestimated how much his actions will materially work towards his goals.
Even "overestimated" probably overstates things, in that it suggests that he got the magnitude wrong but still got the direction of the effect correct. I suspect it's more likely that stop-AI bombings will have roughly the same effect on AI risk that anarchist groups' bombings and murders a century ago had on government overreach.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Agreed, this is just impotent rage finding a lightning rod. You can't change society, but you can (attempt to) murder a CEO.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link