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The effective altruist and longtermist crowd are into it as a religion. They would happily sacrifice anything human to satisfy their dreams of AI. They care way
by dgellow 3mo ago
The effective altruist and longtermist crowd are into it as a religion. They would happily sacrifice anything human to satisfy their dreams of AI. They care way more about what the AI needs than their what their fellow humans need. We will end up with an AGI having better living and working conditions than humans and the whole AI industry will be clapping
- vrganj 3mo agoIt's an ideological thing. (We just had a conversation about ideology actually, remember?) Capitalism has always been a tension between capitalists, who want maximum return on capital and workers, who want pesky things like a living wage, sick leave or safe work conditions. For the longest time, the only power labor has had to get those things was the power of collective bargaining. No agreement with your workers meant no production happened. Now, there's finally a chance at salvation. The capitalist Messiah is AGI and it will finally deliver them from those annoying laborers. This ideological bent is why they're putting everything they have into AI. It's why VCs and their fellow capitalists are going so crazy. They see it as a way to finally solve the contradictions of their ideology, but in reality it'd only create a new one: If everyone's out of a job, who will buy their products?
- inigyou 3mo agoI wish I was smart enough to credibly promise capitalists they could replace all their workers. It doesn't matter that I can't do it. They'll pay me lots of money if they think I can.
- danqqqq 3mo ago[dead]
- eloisius 3mo agoIf they had AGI, why would they need consumers anymore? Just use your drone army to secure all natural resources and produce whatever you need for yourself. Other humans are just pets.
- a2ff6eeb0 3mo agoAnd this is why we need to escape the permanent underclass.
- vrganj 3mo agoHow about we don't create one instead?
- a2ff6eeb0 3mo agoIt's not a choice we have, unless you want to figure out a global AI ban treaty. AI will make human thought economically useless. In the new economy, the one economically useful thing we will be able to do is legal property ownership.
- vrganj 3mo ago> The one economically useful thing we will be able to do is legal property ownership. This is correct. But we don't need to ban AI to avoid the permanent underclass nightmare. It's time for the means of production to be owned communally. It's either a cybersocialist utopia or a neofeudalist dystopia. Rosa Luxemburg formulated it pretty well more than a hundred years ago: Socialism or Barbarism!.
- a2ff6eeb0 3mo agoWhat kind of political leverage do the useless have? This isn't a realistically sustainable outcome. Today, people have leverage because removing them has real economic consequences. With AI, we need to be on the useful side of the divide to have any leverage. And then we'd better hope AI has respect for property rights.
- jacquesm 3mo agoProperty rights might be the least of your problems.
- thelastgallon 3mo ago> Capitalism has always been a tension between capitalists, who want maximum return on capital and workers, who want pesky things like a living wage, sick leave or safe work conditions. The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth. (read on HN, not my words)
- Sharlin 3mo agoI think you mean effective accelerationist, not effective altruist, whose position is pretty much the exact opposite.
- GPerson 3mo agoAll of the effective altruists I know have started talking about personhood for AI, which is one of Jacob Tsimerman’s more plausible omnicide scenarios (not that any are that plausible give his timelines look kind of ridiculous).
- dgellow 3mo agoThe Effective Altruism(tm) believers are part of the accelerationist. See SBF, the Amodei Siblings, Karnofsky (spouse of Daniela Amodei), and people around them
- mrhottakes 3mo agoThey're the same thing, the "altruists" just lie more effectively.
- datsci_est_2015 3mo agoEffective altruism may have had a positive reputation at some point, but it's definitely jumped the shark and almost everyone influential who invokes in the context of AI it seems to have fallen into the trap of the "bottomless pit of suffering" of utilitarianism. Just like the utilitarians in the thought experiment tossing everything positive in their life into the bottomless pit of suffering, the effective altruist AI thought leaders are tossing our entire economy to the gambit that the singularity will bring about the end of human suffering.
- koe123 3mo agoEffective altruism is a grift that justifies “get as much money as possible for the individual” so that “you can then so something good with it”. Aha! OK bro you’re saying you should have all the things huh? Anyone into this shit should be immediately distrusted.
- urams 3mo agoIt's so weird how distorted your view of any of these concepts are from what these people actually say. I don't think you've ever seriously looked into either group if you believe any of their views support what you say. In fact, many EAs and "longetermists" are explicitly AGAINST the development of AGI.
- infamouscow 3mo ago[flagged]
- urams 3mo agoSpecify the action for which you wish violence on these people? BTW, not sure what gets more anti-human and evil than wishing violence on whole groups of people!
- bigfishrunning 3mo agoThe EAs told me a monster will come get me if I don't put all of my effort into developing an AGI...
- dgellow 3mo agoIf you say so. I’ve been following the development of both groups since almost a decade, I’m pretty confident I understand their concepts and what values they stand for
- urams 3mo agoPlease explain an EA position that could possibly suggest that they would deprioritize human lives in order to make AGI more comfortable when, for example, the largest EA philanthropy organization, Coefficient Giving, formerly Open Philanthropy, has given millions to Yudkowksy's MIRI which is currently among the most anti-AGI organizations on the planet? Can you find any explicitly EA organization that is at all aligned in perspective with anything you suggested?
- deleted 3mo ago