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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33025 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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Finally, concrete plan how to save the world from paperclipping dropped, presented by world (in)famous Basilisk Man himself.

https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1647772106560552962

Government prints money to buy all advanced AI GPUs back at purchase price. And shuts down the fabs. Comprehensive Anti-Moore's Law rules rushed through. We go back to ~2010 compute.

TL;DR: GPU's over certain capability are treated like fissionable materials, unauthorized possession, distribution and use will be seen as terrorism and dealt with appropriately.

So, is it feasible? Could it work?

If by "government" Roko means US government (plus vassals allies) alone, it is not possible.

If US can get China aboard, if if there is worldwide expert consensus that unrestricted propagation of computing power will kill everyone, it is absolutely feasible to shut down 99,99% of unauthorized computing all over the world.

Unlike drugs or guns, GPU's are not something you can make in your basement - they are really like enriched uranium or plutonium in the sense you need massive industrial plants to produce them.

Unlike enriched uranium and plutonium, GPU's were already manufactured in huge numbers, but combination of carrots (big piles of cash) and sticks (missile strikes/special forces raids on suspicious locations) will continue dwindling them down and no new ones will be coming.

AI research will of course continue (like work on chemical and biological weapons goes on), but only by trustworthy government actors in the deepest secrecy. You can trust NSA (and Chinese equivalent) AI.

The most persecuted people of the world, gamers, will be, as usual, hit the hardest.

The thing concerning to me is a lot of the world is living in some 19th century geopolitics now. Humans are not getting smarter. Not just in geopolitics but in a lot of areas I keep getting the feeling same old dumb humans. On many issues. Financial markets have been borderline retarded the past few years.

We should be talking with China right now on these issues but instead we are talking about Taiwan. Putin thinks he’s living some pre-industrial age imperialist tsar simulation. Even if US politics was sufficiently functional to deal with AI risks we would need to negotiate with countries with even worse management. Losing AI to China would seem to be a big risks. Which makes me feel like we need to move at max speed forward and pray that their is a god and all this stuff gets worked out in real time.

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