3 ms·

The Unabomber Was an AI Doomer

19 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

davidguetta 3y ago
Every generation since the history of humanity has had some Doomer: religious doomers (mayas, ragnarok, even monotheist ones), nuclear, AI, the environement or the classic 'things were better before society is just collapsing'.. It's almost like it's a personality trait of a part of a population to think that at any given time.
- vkou 3y ago
  Man, with the benefit of hindsight, those leaded-gasoline-doomers and the atlantic-cod-doomers and the OxyCotin-doomers sure misguided! It's not like the sea's going to run out of fish[1]... 'There are doomers' is not particularly interesting. It's an opinion, people have them. What's interesting is what people have to say about the particulars. [1] Except that it did.
  - davidguetta 3y ago
    Well first a broken clock is always right twice a day... but also the example you give are SPECIFIC, not just general doom and gloom. The unabomber was being scared of technology in general
- senttoschool 3y ago
  We came pretty close to nuclear war between the US and Russia though. In fact, a Russian, thankfully, decided to ignore a false alarm to prevent a full out nuclear war. And I don't think we're out of nuclear threat yet. As for environmental, it's headed that way unless we figure out some technology to recycle everything and reduce the impact of humans to neutral. For AI, we don't know yet but a lot of smart people are putting out the alarm. As humans continue to advance in technology, the chance of one of those technologies destroying us increases. I don't think anyone can dispute this.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    Every few weeks it seems Russia is trying to find allies by having a "free nukes party", considering using them in Ukraine, or telling a large nation about the "grave consequences" for supplying Ukraine with munutions. The US may have avoided thermonuclear war at one point, but the hazards are very much still alive to this day. Second strike capabilities were invented to cause an extinction scale event in retaliation for a genocidal one. The beauty of the AI threat model is, in its current incarnation, there's no extinction scale event plausible. But it could be used to cripple critical infrastructure, win wars on developed nations, overthrow regimes, etc if laws are not made, and infrastructure not invented to protect us.
speedgoose 3y ago
I don’t know why people that are not historians or investigators should think about what terrorists wrote. That sounds like a bad idea for the society overall. It encourages them.
srslack 3y ago
Most “AI doomerism” parroted and boosted by the media consists of whinging about the danger of some hypothetical general intelligence as an absurd and far fetched existential threat in and of itself, not as a socioeconomic threat or threat fundamental to our humanity (differentiated from a threat to our species, to be clear.) In fact, at least from my perspective, most of those AI doomers are the “elite” that Kaczynski talks about. They’re looking to control it, have the academics that Kaczynski despises on their side, are good at bullshitting, etc., and a good way to control it and keep power in your hands is to paper over the real risks and perform regulatory capture. That is to say, they want that system of technological progress to continue, but they want it to continue in a way that is controlled by them, centralization. So, yes, but no. He absolutely despised those people. To clarify, I don't think you'll find many who want the whole system to stop, the most extreme you find are those who still want the system to continue, but want only “responsible” and “safe” companies to have control over such things, flip flopping between that and the possibility of air striking datacenters if some multi-modal model convinces them that it's sentient.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  In my mind the risk AGI poses is actually lower than that of current LLMs for the most part. Current use cases for LLMs are well aligned with the weaponization and exploitation of social and infrastructure flaws then they are for societal good. People bringing up the hazards of AGI as a hyperbole for ignoring discussions of risk/merit of current AI technologies are acting disingenuously. We really shouldn't distract ourselves from the matter at hand and divide people over the reality of the issue(s) that do currently exist.
thumbuddy 3y ago
Apparently so is Geoffrey Hinton, Bill Gates, and hundreds of other well educated nonviolent people. New technology poses new risks, and those risks can and should be understood. Calling people "doomers" and relating them to ecoterrorists politicizes the issue, and dehumanizes valid points of view. "Adolf hitler was a vegetarian painter". Technically correct, but slanders two otherwise very reasonable groups of people by stating the irrelevant things about a person's impact on society.
- q1w2 3y ago
  ...and to those who agree that AI has major risks, it glorifies a mentally-disturbed murderer.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
The highlighted quote in the thumbnail is in particular about destructive technology. Its like that scene in the matrix when Neo is in Xion with the old guy looking down the abyss at the massive machine, talking about our relationship with machines. Do we rely on them to the point that they control us? We talk about fossil fuels and global warming and that quote rings true. When you rely on something so much that you can't turn it off, even if using it will destroy you.

19 points by headalgorithm 3y ago

Every generation since the history of humanity has had some Doomer: religious doomers (mayas, ragnarok, even monotheist ones), nuclear, AI, the environement or the classic 'things were better before society is just collapsing'.. It's almost like it's a personality trait of a part of a population to think that at any given time.

vkou 3y ago
Man, with the benefit of hindsight, those leaded-gasoline-doomers and the atlantic-cod-doomers and the OxyCotin-doomers sure misguided! It's not like the sea's going to run out of fish[1]... 'There are doomers' is not particularly interesting. It's an opinion, people have them. What's interesting is what people have to say about the particulars. [1] Except that it did.
- davidguetta 3y ago
  Well first a broken clock is always right twice a day... but also the example you give are SPECIFIC, not just general doom and gloom. The unabomber was being scared of technology in general
senttoschool 3y ago
We came pretty close to nuclear war between the US and Russia though. In fact, a Russian, thankfully, decided to ignore a false alarm to prevent a full out nuclear war. And I don't think we're out of nuclear threat yet. As for environmental, it's headed that way unless we figure out some technology to recycle everything and reduce the impact of humans to neutral. For AI, we don't know yet but a lot of smart people are putting out the alarm. As humans continue to advance in technology, the chance of one of those technologies destroying us increases. I don't think anyone can dispute this.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  Every few weeks it seems Russia is trying to find allies by having a "free nukes party", considering using them in Ukraine, or telling a large nation about the "grave consequences" for supplying Ukraine with munutions. The US may have avoided thermonuclear war at one point, but the hazards are very much still alive to this day. Second strike capabilities were invented to cause an extinction scale event in retaliation for a genocidal one. The beauty of the AI threat model is, in its current incarnation, there's no extinction scale event plausible. But it could be used to cripple critical infrastructure, win wars on developed nations, overthrow regimes, etc if laws are not made, and infrastructure not invented to protect us.

speedgoose 3y ago

I don’t know why people that are not historians or investigators should think about what terrorists wrote. That sounds like a bad idea for the society overall. It encourages them.

srslack 3y ago

Most “AI doomerism” parroted and boosted by the media consists of whinging about the danger of some hypothetical general intelligence as an absurd and far fetched existential threat in and of itself, not as a socioeconomic threat or threat fundamental to our humanity (differentiated from a threat to our species, to be clear.) In fact, at least from my perspective, most of those AI doomers are the “elite” that Kaczynski talks about. They’re looking to control it, have the academics that Kaczynski despises on their side, are good at bullshitting, etc., and a good way to control it and keep power in your hands is to paper over the real risks and perform regulatory capture. That is to say, they want that system of technological progress to continue, but they want it to continue in a way that is controlled by them, centralization. So, yes, but no. He absolutely despised those people. To clarify, I don't think you'll find many who want the whole system to stop, the most extreme you find are those who still want the system to continue, but want only “responsible” and “safe” companies to have control over such things, flip flopping between that and the possibility of air striking datacenters if some multi-modal model convinces them that it's sentient.

thumbuddy 3y ago
In my mind the risk AGI poses is actually lower than that of current LLMs for the most part. Current use cases for LLMs are well aligned with the weaponization and exploitation of social and infrastructure flaws then they are for societal good. People bringing up the hazards of AGI as a hyperbole for ignoring discussions of risk/merit of current AI technologies are acting disingenuously. We really shouldn't distract ourselves from the matter at hand and divide people over the reality of the issue(s) that do currently exist.

thumbuddy 3y ago

Apparently so is Geoffrey Hinton, Bill Gates, and hundreds of other well educated nonviolent people. New technology poses new risks, and those risks can and should be understood. Calling people "doomers" and relating them to ecoterrorists politicizes the issue, and dehumanizes valid points of view. "Adolf hitler was a vegetarian painter". Technically correct, but slanders two otherwise very reasonable groups of people by stating the irrelevant things about a person's impact on society.

q1w2 3y ago
...and to those who agree that AI has major risks, it glorifies a mentally-disturbed murderer.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

The highlighted quote in the thumbnail is in particular about destructive technology. Its like that scene in the matrix when Neo is in Xion with the old guy looking down the abyss at the massive machine, talking about our relationship with machines. Do we rely on them to the point that they control us? We talk about fossil fuels and global warming and that quote rings true. When you rely on something so much that you can't turn it off, even if using it will destroy you.