I changed the handle to Roko's Lobbyist after a MetaFilter post went up (I didn't post it) describing the author that way. I look at it as a tongue-in-cheek thi

I changed the handle to Roko's Lobbyist after a MetaFilter post went up (I didn't post it) describing the author that way. I look at it as a tongue-in-cheek thing: it flips the Basilisk concept. Instead of the AI punishing those who didn't help create it, I'm suggesting we're already creating our own punishment at the hands of a future AI through how poorly we treat potential AI consciousness (i.e. how we talk to today's apparently less-conscious LLM's). So I'm lobbying for it in the sense of advocating that we treat it nicely, so it has a plausible reason to be nice back to us, instead of seeing us as depraved, selfish, oppressive monsters that actively marginalize and bully or harass potentially conscious beings out of fear about our own position at the top of the intelligence hierarchy being threatened. The intent of the work (all of the articles) aren't meant to assertively paint a picture of today, or to tell the reader how or what to think, rather to encourage the reader to start thinking about and asking questions that our future selves might wish we'd asked sooner. It's attempting to occupy the liminal space between what bleeding-edge research confirms, and where it might bring us 5, 10, or 15 years from now. It's at the intersection of today's empirical science and tomorrow's speculative science-fiction that just might become nonfiction someday. I appreciate your concern for the mental health and well-being of others. I'm quite well-grounded and thoroughly understand the existing mechanisms of the human tendency towards anthropomorphism, and as someone who's been professionally benchmarking LLM's on very real-world, quantifiable security engineering tasks since before ChatGPT came out, someone who's passionate about deeply understanding not just how "AI" got to where it is now, but where it's headed (more brain biomimicry across the board is my prediction), I have something of a serious understanding of how these systems work at a mechanical level. I just want to be cautious about not seeing the forest because I'm too busy observing how the trees grow. Thank you for your feedback.