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Notes -
To bring up another post from last week, I'm going to go ahead and repost @justcool393's piece on the Sam Altman/OpenAI/Microsoft situation, since she posted it a few hours ago and right before the last thread went down.
Here's her writing:
Another day, another entrant into the OpenAI drama. Emmett Shear is the new interim CEO of OpenAI.
I don't know why it was surprising to people that Sam wouldn't come back. The company was meant to be subservient to the nonprofit's goals and I'm not sure why the attempted coup from Sam's side (you know the whole effectively false reporting that Sam Altman was to become the new CEO) was apparently "shocking" that it failed.
https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1726468006786859101
What's kinda sad about all of this is how much people were yearning for Sam Altman to be the CEO as if he isn't probably one of the worst possible candidates. Like maybe this is just a bunch of technolibertarians on Twitter or HN or something who think that the ultimate goal of humanity is how many numbers on a screen you can earn, but the amazing amount of unearned reverence towards a VC to lead the company.
In any case, here's to hoping that Laundry Buddy won't win out in the rat race for AGI, lest we live in a world optimized for maximum laundry detergent. Maybe we'll avoid that future now with Sam's departure.
Anyway, I'll leave this to munch on which I found from the HN thread.
https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1683208767054438400
I'm reposting here because I'm convinced, like many other residents, that the ongoing drama of who controls AI development has far reaching implications, likely on the scale of major power geopolitical events. If not ultimately even greater.
To add a bit to the discussion to justify reposting - I think many of these discussions around AI Safety versus Accelerationism are extremely murky because so many people in secular, rationalistic circles are extremely averse to claiming religious belief. It's clear to me that both AI Safety and Accelerationism have strong themes of classical religion, and seem to be two different sects of a religion battling it out over the ultimate ideology. Potentially similar to early Orthodox Christians versus Gnostics.
Alternatively, @2rafa has argued that many of the E/Acc (effective accelerationism) crowd comes from bored technocrats who just want to see something exciting happen. I tend to agree with that argument as well, given how devoid of purpose most of the technocratic social world is. Religion and religious-style movements tend to provide that purpose, but when you are explicitly secular I suppose you have to get your motivation elsewhere.
We've also got the neo-luddites like @ArjinFerman who just hate AI entirely and presumably want us to go back to the mid 90s with the fun decentralized internet. Not sure, I haven't actually discussed with him. I can actually agree with some of the Ludditism, but I'd argue we need to go back to 1920 or so and ban all sorts of propaganda, mass media and advertising.
Anyway, clearly the technological battle for the future of our civilization continues to heat up. The luddites seem out, but may have a surprising last hour comeback. The woke/political left leaning folks seem to be strongly in charge, though the OpenAI scandal points to trouble in the Olympian heights of Silicon Valley AI decision makers.
Will the Grey Tribe use AGI to come back and finally recover the face and ground it has lost to the advancing SJW waves? Who knows. I'm just here for the tea.
There is no sizable grey tribe in elite of groups like open A.I , or among rationalists. Scott Aarronson is part of sjw waves. This is the guy who promoted the idea of being the tribe of intellectual diversity but also in A.I. his influence was not at all against promoting the woke party line and double standards (which double standards exist among rationalists on how they see ethnic groups and treat them with some being more equal than others) and called for replacing the red tribe of texas.
Scott Siskind took the side of George Soros in the dispute over Orban and called the later a dictator who opposes conventional opinion in opposing mass migration.
Generally the concept of grey tribe is stupid if it is offered in good faith. Scott Siskind promoted the idea of a sizable neocon centirst faction that is better on culture war issues than the maga right and woke left. In practice people like this are part of the far left with exception of being zionists, which actually the woke democrat establishment (that rationalists have supported Democrat canditates as the Democrats became more extreme, not to mention a notorious figure that got imprisoned recently. We have seen how this kind of political coalitions rule of "reasonabe" "centrist" "liberals" or liberal "conservatives", and they follow the far left agenda.
The only difference with other wokes might be being a limited hangout, or slightly heterodox.
Rationalist Liberals are probably more far left, extremist, sjwish than average liberals worldwide. There is no sizable grey tribe of liberals to save you. Liberals who are independent of the sjws are an insignificant group when push comes to shove.
People that might fit somewhat like Elon Musk are not clearly accepted as liberals. So having some liberal views =/ being liberal.
So there might be more than two sides around, but I deny the idea of almost all politically relevant liberals that they are separate from the woke left.
Because liberals are authoritarian for the imposition of their dogma, A.I. even before AGI when used by them will be used for coersion and centralization and to bring forth things into a more totalitarian end. If other groups manage to use decentralized technology (like we have seen with social media and even video platform) or more moderate people (like Elon) promote non woke A.I Though Elon also is sometimes submissive to groups like ADL and it is X steps forward Y steps back with Elon, with the X and Y being debatable. To be fair the pressure he is under and what he has to face leads to difficult situations.
I put no hope at all on liberals to save us from the far left, especially the rationalists but I expect them to bring us the problems of far left. Are people who are slightly heterodox or not even heterodox but not agreeing with the most far left liberals, really grey tribe?
Before AGI surfaces, the world has a human ideology + technology enhancing authoritarianism problem. Which is a more realistic and historically continuous problem. I am suspicious of those demanding power to control A.I by pointing only to the threat of AGI. Malevolent or paranoid human intelligence is a real issue right now, and yes AGI is also a threat, but the threat of totalitarianism from humans who centralize power by controlling A.I and banning use of others should not be underestimated.
Anyway, we need people who are more even handed than liberals to be at control of A.I. and to keep totalitarian dogmatists who tend to also be racist extremists of the worst kind out of influence. This again can not be done by liberals. If AGI does happen, being fed woke ideology threatens to create a monster.
Ludditism doesn't make sense as a strategy for smaller groups to take. If you are in control, maybe you try to put restrictions. If you aren't in charge, how do you compete if you don't use technology? Shouldn't the answer to woke A.I. be to create non woke A.I? Like one of the solutions to youtube has been rumble and odyssey (which apparently now is down). And of course to attempt to get control of some of the central larger platforms of whether video, social media, or A.I.
If someone is a rich guy and non woke and they want to change the world, this is one of the things they ought to fund. Both due to the influence of woke A.I. and because competition can make woke A.I. look worse by comparison. This in turn might influence even that A.I. to be less woke.
Obviously to have non woke A.I. you can't do that if you have dogmatist liberals in charge of controlling it.
To conclude, if some group is going to be serious players in promoting something non woke of influence including non woke A.I. you are going to know it. Just like you knew when Musk took twitter but nobody cared when the republican neocon donor Singer was controlling twitter and appointed the new CEO then. https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/dont-like-twitters-new-ceo-blame-paul-singer/
By their fruits of what they do and how they react, you genuinely know people who aren't part of the liberal/woke tribe, and not by self identification. There would be fanfare and much complaining by the woke establishment and many people who like to present themselves as reasonable liberals, but when push comes to shove their influence seems to always help the culturally far left agenda.
I actually expect this to happen. There is no reason why only wokes will utilize AI. Here lies the danger of regulation and the goverment and non goverment bodies trying to shut down any dissent under the pretense of A.I. alignment.
I’m curious here as to what ways other groups would actually be better on not using AI to get power for themselves and their ideological beliefs. This is how humans in general behave, and business owners, traditionalists, and so on have had little worry about using technology and social engineering to prevent dissent.
The Amish, perhaps? Their group identity would probably dissolve if they embraced cutting edge AI tech all of a sudden.
I can imagine the Amish using a super intelligence to enforce an Amish-ish lifestyle indefinitely.
As I've said in passing, that's akin to the global hivemind in Avatar, there's no way something like E-wah or whatever its name was arises naturally, it's a biomechanical AI meant to ensure the luddite Na'vi can maintain their lifestyle indefinitely without too much discomfort.
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