I’m not a proponent of this mindset but this seems like an obvious mischaracterization of the argument
My biggest issues is that it seems to exist only in direct response to “doomers” as they love to say. And are maybe right to criticize, but having the whole thing just being a counter extreme doesn’t work either. And there’s lot of hand waving about technology and history and markets correcting themselves.
But I’ve never gotten the impression that it’s just a cynical “I don’t care if AI fucks everyone as long as I make money.”
It’s 100% not a mischaracterization. Most of the ghouls involved with these AI companies to a one are effective altruists. Who would gladly see millions suffer and die. If they thought it would mean that they and the people they chose would get to go on and colonize space and other worlds etc. They would totally rip this planet, a new hole and shit all over everything just to get them themselves ahead.
They really really don’t care. Altman, musk, Google, Microsoft. They literally couldn’t care less. Though you’re more than welcome to try to prove otherwise. But I don’t condone masochism.
Most of the ghouls involved with these AI companies to a one are effective altruists. Who would gladly see millions suffer and die. If they thought it would mean that they and the people they chose would get to go on and colonize space and other worlds etc.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here given that wikipedia describes effective altruism as:
Effective altruism (often abbreviated EA) is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis”.[1][2] People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, sometimes called effective altruists,[3] may choose careers based on the amount of good that they expect the career to achieve or donate to charities based on the goal of maximising positive impact. They may work on the prioritization of scientific projects, entrepreneurial ventures, and policy initiatives estimated to save the most lives or reduce the most suffering.[4]: 179–195
Effective altruists aim to emphasize impartiality and the global equal consideration of interests when choosing beneficiaries. Popular cause priorities within effective altruism include global health and development, social inequality, animal welfare, and risks to the survival of humanity over the long-term future.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Effective altruism (often abbreviated EA) is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, sometimes called effective altruists, may choose careers based on the amount of good that they expect the career to achieve or donate to charities based on the goal of maximising positive impact. They may work on the prioritization of scientific projects, entrepreneurial ventures, and policy initiatives estimated to save the most lives or reduce the most suffering.: 179–195 Effective altruists aim to emphasize impartiality and the global equal consideration of interests when choosing beneficiaries. Popular cause priorities within effective altruism include global health and development, social inequality, animal welfare, and risks to the survival of humanity over the long-term future. The movement developed during the 2000s, and the name effective altruism was coined in 2011. Philosophers influential to the movement include Peter Singer, Toby Ord, and William MacAskill. What began as a set of evaluation techniques advocated by a diffuse coalition evolved into an identity. With approximately 7,000 people active in the effective altruism community and strong ties to the elite schools in the United States and Britain, effective altruism has become associated with Silicon Valley and the technology industry, forming a tight subculture.The movement received mainstream attention and criticism with the bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX as founder Sam Bankman-Fried was a major funder of effective altruism causes prior to late 2022. Within the Bay Area, it received criticism for having a culture that has been described as toxic and sexually exploitative towards women, which led to conversations inside the community about how to create an environment that can better prevent and fight sexual misconduct.
Effective altruism is something that sounds good in principle, and I still think is good in general, though can kind of run out of control.
Sam Bankman Fried was someone who at least claimed to follow this philosophy. The issue being that you can talk yourself into doing bad things (fraud) in the name or earning money that you would then donate much of.
And more generally get into doing “long term” or “big picture” good while also doing a lot of harm. But hey the ends justify the means.
Again, I think the principle of being a lot more calculated in how we do philanthropy is a huge good thing. But the EA movement has had some missteps and probably needs to be reigned in a bit.
Funnily enough Wiki quotes Altman as one of the critics.
I don’t think it’s necessarily true that if we listen to “doomers” we get sensible policy. And it’s probably more likely we get regulatory capture.
But there does exist a sensible middle ground.
I actually think they are correct to bring up the potential upside as something we should consider more in the moral calculus. But the of course it’s taken to a silly extreme.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Effective Accelerationism movement — a staunchly pro-AI ideology that has Silicon Valley split over how artificial intelligence should be regulated — appears to be walking a razor’s edge between being a techno-libertarian philosophy and a nihilistic, even reckless, approach to advancing one of the world’s most significant technological developments.
A riff on the effective altruism, or “EA,” philosophy touted by tech influencers like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk, e/acc took off in 2023, though its exact origins remain unclear.
A jargon-filled website spreading the gospel of Effective Accelerationism describes “technocapitalistic progress” as inevitable, lauding e/acc proponents as builders who are “making the future happen.”
In the site’s first blog post, written by anonymous e/acc proponents @zestular, @creatine_cycle, @bayeslord, and @BasedBeffJezos — who Forbes later confirmed is Guillaume Verdon, a former Google engineer who later founded the AI startup Extropic — reads “We haven’t seen anything yet.”
Billionaire Andreessen, who has written and released a 5,000-word manifesto detailing his support of rapidly developing AI, has also invested heavily in the industry — including OpenAI, per Forbes.
E/accs want to reshape society radically, alter how we work and interact, and redefine what it means to be alive, but the general public doesn’t have much of a say in AI — or enough money to have a voice.
The original article contains 1,332 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Rather, accelerated capitalism?
Accelerate towards UBI, you cowards.
Which would actually accelerate progress more than any other national allocation of funds.
Ever since the industrial revolution, the driver of progress has been mass purchasing and mass production.
If only billionaires could afford an iPhone, we would only be on the 3rd or 4th revision by now.
It was the subsiding of cell phone hardware that accelerated that market because carriers effectively covered hundreds of the costs so nearly everyone was buying them every two years.
If people want acceleration of the future, inject as much money as possible to main street - it’s the closest equivalent to throwing fuel on the fire of industrial capitalism.
Hoarding it among executives or money traders is a fickle and temporary accelerant which is much slower than the alternative over sustained periods.
UBI falls into the bread and circuses camp of policy to me. On one hand I really do want people that need bread to get it, so I’m not opposed, but it’s a placating move that I don’t see how it handles the growing fear of labors value to society being eroded. Like it’s great and all to say “human life has inherent value” but most wouldn’t give up a few dollars that could be spent on nick nacks to save a human life, because a random person with no measurable impact on your life isn’t relevant to your life.
Socialism for example is totally built on the idea that because of industrialzation laborers have soft power that they can leverage to influence society in their favor. That’s a real concern that we should focus on addressing and I think attempting to ignore it through ineffectual and local bans will only serve to make those countries less relevant as a whole.
My view of it is that if it doesn’t go fast, we end up in a boiled frog situation where every year a few more jobs are lost but not enough for people to protest and the rich end up owning all of us like slaves after a couple of decades.
If in the space of a few years we lose virtually all jobs, it will be hard to argue against the obvious solutions like rapid nationalization of assets and fully automated communism.
While I agree with your first paragraph, I’m not sure that communism would be a solution, given how history has shown us that it can be quite easily corrupted and used by the elite to exploit the masses.
A capitalist system where political power have the means to control financial power, and where there are limits to the influence of money in politics, might be better IMHO.
I’m not sure that capitalism would be a solution, given how history has shown us that it designed to be corrupt and used by the elite to exploit the masses.
Humans being as they are, just as it is naive to expect that a Society were everybody has the same (i.e. the actual Communist utopia) even if created instantly by magic would remain Equal for more than a few seconds, it’s naive to expect that in a Society were personal monetary wealth is valued as the greatest quality of a person and the core political message is that “Greed is Good”, the Makers of Laws (a.k.a. Politicians) and the Enforcers of Laws would be - uniquelly in such a society - not driven by personal upside maximization and instead work for the common good.
In the game of Capitalism, there is no greater Return On Investment than that of buying rules and referees and the more it get invested in overall on those with the power to subvert the system that defines and imposes check & balances the easier it gets to treat law-making and law-enforcement as services for sale.
Scandinavian nations are degrading along with everybody else at this point, it just took longer and was harder to subvert governance in the heavilly supervised version of Capitalism of countries with a general pro-social culture than it did in “free for all” US of A were there none of the social, non-Capitalist, ideological elements are about considering others and not just one’s own satisfaction and ego (which is how you end up with Libertarians rather than Equalitarians and pure ego-driven Moralists rather than Conservatives).
Can you honestly look at the state of society (and the planet, in a more literal sense) and say that capitalism is doing a good job…? It’s rampant with corruption and suffering.
It’s doing a not so bad job in a few countries (spoiler: the US is not among them), e.g. Finland, Denmark, Germany, Canada. I’m not saying it’s a perfect system, not even a good system, just that it’s a good place to start.
Wealth redistribution requires that there’s wealth to begin with, and capitalism is clearly the system with the best incentives to create wealth. You just need strong policies to prevent sociopaths a la Musk, Thiel or Bezos to try to hoard “all the money”, to easily break up monopolies, etc.
A frog that is slowly boiled will jump out. However, if it’s dropped in boiling water, it’ll die because it doesn’t have time to jump out before the proteins in its body get destroyed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
Relevant because I don’t think slow change is as irreversible as fast change, and might actually be more manageable
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
The boiling frog is an apologue describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly. While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual, according to modern biologists the premise is false: changing location is a natural thermoregulation strategy for frogs and other ectotherms, and is necessary for survival in the wild. A frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Furthermore, a frog placed into already boiling water will die immediately, not jump out.
