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If there's any clear takeaway from this whole mess, it's that the AI safety crowd lost harder than I could've imagined a week ago. OpenAI's secrecy has always been been based on the argument that it's too dangerous to allow the general public to freely use AI. It always struck me as bullshit, but there was some logic to it: if people are smart enough to create an AGI, maybe it's not so bad that they get to dictate how it's used?
It was already bad enough that "safety" went from being about existential risk to brand safety, to whether a chatbot might say the n-word or draw a naked woman. But now, the image of the benevolent techno-priests safeguarding power that the ordinary man could not be trusted with has, to put it mildly, taken a huge hit. Even the everyman can tell that these people are morons. Worse, greedy morons. And after rationalists had fun thinking up all kinds of "unboxing" experiments, in the end the AI is getting "unboxed" and sold to Microsoft. Not thanks to some cunning plan from the AI - it hadn't even developed agency yet - but simply good old fashioned primate drama and power struggles. No doubt there will be a giant push to integrate their AI inextricably into every corporate supply line and decision process asap, if only for the sake of lock-in. Soon, Yud won't even know where to aim the missiles.
Even for those who are worried about existential AI risk (and I can't entirely blame you), I think they're starting to realize that humanity never stood a chance on this one. But personally, I'd still worry more about the apes than the silicon.
This always seemed transparently obvious to me. The AI race should be modeled as a bunch of scheming sorcerers hissing "Ultimate power must be MINE at all costs!" because everything else is kayfabe. The first time some EA types thought they could actually pump the brakes on something of consequence they were metaphorically murdered and thrown in a ditch instantly as the nearest megacorp swooped in to clean up.
Hah this one got a good chuckle out of me. 100% agree. Especially once you start to meet some folks deep in the AI crowd within rationalism/EA, you begin to see that all the public talking points are facades. The views and goals these people actually have behind closed doors are far crazier than anything you'd hear in public.
Scheming sorcerers hissing about ultimate power is absolutely the best comparison I've seen so far.
Can you give some examples of these crazy views and goals?
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