A few things first: –This isn’t an argument against AI optimists (any of their types and degrees) or their positions. –“AI” is insanely semantically broad. ----One “anti-AI” person could deal specifically in the political realm: datacenters, water/energy usage, land use, zoning. ----Another “anti-AI” person is more of a classic “doomer”: discomfort with non-human minds/agency, catastrophic risk, etc. ----Convergence and overlap between these is plausible. ----Same applies on the flipside with optimists, and people can mix “pro” and “anti” across different axes within themselves. It’s not crazy to say that in just these 10 days of September, the talk of AI, from hype to doom, has been more intense across the board. Kudos to Astra and Jacob Coxon. But regardless of the truths, falsehoods, and everything in between on both sides, there’s a shared understanding that AI is getting harder, better, faster, stronger. Not to mention further. Bringing AI into this world will be done by the optimists. An important connection I’ve made: optimists, no matter their type or degree, tend to converge on their “objects of enthusiasm” more than pessimists converge on their “objects of opposition.” A strong optimist gets excited about AI hitting new capability thresholds, pretty much independent of who deploys it or how. From there, excitement builds toward AI as a better instrument for discovery (materials science, math), then economic productivity, then abundance, access, and ubiquity, up to a singularity with post-scarcity freedom and governance. A civilizational flywheel, thanks to superhuman AI. Pessimists converge less. Some are “politically” anti-AI but by no means doomers. Others are real doomers, some of them former optimists, who got there because they became validly disillusioned by the lack of broader alignment work and the field’s own admission of a real chance of catastrophe. Right now, strong optimists and strong pessimists look similar in one respect: an unnuanced, extreme, or blind confidence about where AI’s current trajectory is headed. But the world is more strongly poised for continued AI facilitation and deployment right now. Optimism has momentum that pessimism doesn’t. So here’s where I try to think about actual stakes, not just probabilities. Take pessimism to its extreme, something like a Butlerian Jihad full rollback. I don’t think that’s a one-way door. Knowledge doesn’t disappear, humanity persists, and if restriction turns out to be an overcorrection, development can resume later. Real costs along the way, but the option to change course stays open. Now take optimism to its extreme failure mode: the loss-of-control or extinction scenario that even the people running the major labs assign a non-trivial chance of happening. That’s a one-way door. I know a pessimist “victory” isn’t free either. Diseases not cured sooner, suffering persisting, less cautious actors racing ahead in the vacuum left behind. But it’s reversible in a way extinction isn’t. That asymmetry, reversibility over likelihood, is what I’m trying to defend. Strong optimistic justifications for furthering AI with as little deliberation as possible rest on the assumption that the singularity flywheel comes together cleanly, as if none of these objects of enthusiasm will hit their own hiccups, as if it’s all structurally destined. But the premise isn’t destined. Even when “anti-AI” or pessimistic arguments are flawed or emotionally charged, I don’t often see optimist counters that go beyond quick mockery. When they’re not mockery, they lean on the hope that the flywheel is basically clockwork, inevitable enough that it doesn’t need arguing for. Am I wrong that real engagement is mostly missing? Where has it happened well, and what did that look like? Mockery and appeals to inevitability don’t count as engagement to me. But maybe I’m missing where the real version of this is happening. If: –Convergence really is optimists’ structural advantage, and, –Their objects of enthusiasm reinforce each other into something close to consensus, Doesn’t that put them in the best position to take pessimist objections seriously, instead of routing around them? Or is that an unfair ask? submitted by /u/mensfructus
Originally posted by u/mensfructus on r/ArtificialInteligence
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