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The schism between AI accelerationists and doomers is reminiscent of the rift between people who are pro- and anti- widespread entheogen use. I see both as a wa

The schism between AI accelerationists and doomers is reminiscent of the rift between people who are pro- and anti- widespread entheogen use. I see both as a way to contact nonhuman intelligences, and I predict that if anyone cares to do a survey, they'd find that concerns about doing so via DMT will correlate tightly with concerns about doing so via concerns about doing so via LLMs. The major difference being that entheogens are a fairly mature technology and LLMs are the new scary thing. As someone who is perhaps a bit unbalanced to the accelerationist camp I perceive the argument for caution a concern about too much change too quickly, particularly to existing authority structures. It's easy to dismiss most of those arguments as fear of the existing authority to losing control of a population with different priorities. Are there arguments from that side that aren't vulnerable to that dismissal?

cheeseomlit 3y ago
Interesting comparison, though I think the 'beings' we perceive on entheogens are just reflections of our own psyche rather than actual self-replicating machine elves from another dimension I think your dismissal of the doomers concerns is a bit premature, a case can be made that instead of the existing central authorities (however you define them) losing control of the broader population they will instead gain an even greater and more granular level of control. While AI can have a democratizing effect in some areas like art/music/etc., in others it will be the opposite- IE. more efficient dragnet surveillance and autonomous killer drone swarms
- suoduandao3 3y ago
  The scenario you lay out does worry me, but is that not also an argument against strong regulations of AI to minimize the chance of AI only being available to authoritarians? These tools can be weapons in a tyrant's hands, so we should be sure to arm the citizenry? IOW, is it not still an argument for the accelerationist side and against the caution side, even if it's not driven by optimism?

cheeseomlit 3y ago

Interesting comparison, though I think the 'beings' we perceive on entheogens are just reflections of our own psyche rather than actual self-replicating machine elves from another dimension I think your dismissal of the doomers concerns is a bit premature, a case can be made that instead of the existing central authorities (however you define them) losing control of the broader population they will instead gain an even greater and more granular level of control. While AI can have a democratizing effect in some areas like art/music/etc., in others it will be the opposite- IE. more efficient dragnet surveillance and autonomous killer drone swarms

suoduandao3 3y ago
The scenario you lay out does worry me, but is that not also an argument against strong regulations of AI to minimize the chance of AI only being available to authoritarians? These tools can be weapons in a tyrant's hands, so we should be sure to arm the citizenry? IOW, is it not still an argument for the accelerationist side and against the caution side, even if it's not driven by optimism?