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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7196 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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Whether or not it's clearly the best, it's the one that most closely follows the money. I don't think the US frontier companies have any illusions that Chinese companies would match their deceleration, which is another potential finance-driven explanation.

But surely if the Chinese companies aren't going to pace the frontier, then the US frontier companies have even less incentive to slow down (or in this case, to lobby the government to force them to slow down)? If the US government forces them to slow down, then their Chinese competitors will find it easier to overtake them. The fact that they are lobbying for a slowdown in spite of this suggests that their stated concerns about alignment are real.

I mentioned the China-driven explanation only to preemptively reject it, so the idea that Chinese companies would not push the frontier doesnt really move the needle for me. To me, it starts and stop with unsustainable capex, and I think that they would in fact be correct to decelerate for this reason. The HF stuff, besides being a safety concern, is just as importantly an indication that they are not totally capable of turning the current frontier into economically valuable output.

What would it take to convince you their concerns about safety are real?

Have the proposed means of addressing safety not be something that seems to obviously create financial/strategic benefits for them. They need to figure out a costly signal.

There is very obviously not a single thing that could ever satisfy you people. You're twisting literally calling their own sole product a risk to kill all humans in a marketing gimmick to secure regulatory capture. If they carved "No really we're serious about the risks" into their chests and then hung themselves you'd claim they were expecting to receive compensation in the afterlife.

No, I am saying they are using it as cover to slow down unsustainable capex.

And there isn't any possible evidence that could exist that could disabuse you of that impression because pausing unavoidably causes less capex spend. You're epistemically sealed against the straightforward explanation for why the people are doing the things obviously motivated by the durably stated beliefs over many years.

Well, yes, it is tough for the companies making AI to be convincing that they have long been opposed to making AI.

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