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 -
That's been my issue with the entire "open letter calling for a moratorium" and the rest of it. When the share price drops just because the guy who is promoting commercial use of AI gets booted, then we see how this plays out in reality. Market forces don't care about safety or alignment or paperclip maximisers or the rest of the beautiful Golden Age SF techno-optimism theories that the EA subset concerned about AI have been working on for years; they care about the magical eternal money-fountain that this technology promises to be. Microsoft and other companies are already selling their versions of AI to be integrated into your business and pump productivity and profitability up to the moon and beyond. People are already using AI for everything from "write my term paper for me" to increasing amount of articles I see online which are gibberish but do their job of "fill space, get clicks, earn ad revenue".
Nobody is going to pause for six months while their competitors get to market first. That's what the idealists seem to have their heads in the sand about: Microsoft partnered with OpenAI because (a) they were going to develop a marketable product fast and first and (b) just like Altman told Toner, it was to keep the regulators happy: "oh yeah we totally are working on security and safety, don't worry!"
But if "security and safety" stand in the way of "get our hands on the spigot of the money-fountain", guess which gets dropped? I think Sutskever and the board are learning that lesson the hard way now. Altman was telling them what they wanted to hear while making sure the funding kept flowing and the product was being developed. That's why they felt uneasy when it finally dawned on them that they weren't really in control of what was happening, and why they tried kicking him out (straight into the arms of Microsoft and now it seems returning like victorious Caesar to triumph over their corpses).
More options
Context Copy link