new effective altruism coomer bedtime story just dropped
> be me
> effective altruist in 2026
> have spent ten years explaining that democracy is too slow for the coming machine god
> also explain that central planning usually fails
> unless I am doing it
> read one scaling graph
> draw line upward
> line reaches heaven
> conclude capitalism ends in 2031
> AI can now write Python functions with only three subtle security flaws
> obviously two years away from replacing every scientist, general, diplomat, CEO, judge, therapist, novelist, and attractive person at parties
> publish “scenario,” not “prediction”
> give every paragraph exact dates
> assign percentages to imaginary branches
> epistemic humility achieved
> bad timeline:
> companies race
> AI becomes god
> everyone dies
> good timeline:
> US government notices problem
> China agrees
> Congress understands compute governance
> international inspectors find every hidden datacenter
> nobody lies
> nobody defects
> nobody builds chips in a basement
> planet saved
> all we need is total global visibility into advanced computing
> mandatory disclosure of frontier research
> permanent monitoring of industrial infrastructure
> central control over technological development
> relax, this is the anti-authoritarian option
> alignment not solved
> solution: build one billion genius AIs
> they are not superintelligent
> they are merely one billion tireless copies of the best human researchers working at electronic speed
> completely different
> put them in a box
> ask them to solve the problem of escaping boxes
> excellent progress
> year 2034
> AI replaces 80% of labor
> mass unemployment
> social order somehow remains intact
> government sends everyone $1.6 million
> nobody asks where prices went
> year 2037
> cancer cured
> climate solved
> fusion solved
> aging solved
> politics solved
> Reddit moderation still unresolved
> year 2038
> alignment becomes a mature science
> year 2039
> we trust the machines
> year 2040
> hand them civilization
> peer review completed ahead of schedule
> humanity gets a vote
> options are:
> A. accept benevolent AI guardianship
> B. extinction
> meaningful democratic consent achieved
> announce decentralized flourishing
> administered by a globally coordinated compute authority
> with comprehensive surveillance powers
> run by unusually wise people
> who agree with my blog posts
> critics ask whether institutions can actually do any of this
> reply that superintelligence is inevitable
> critics ask whether superintelligence is actually inevitable
> reply that institutions must prepare
> circular reasoning
> but with footnotes
> call it “AI 2040”
> not utopian fiction
> not doomer fiction
> serious strategic foresight
> entire future depends on competent adults appearing at exactly the right moment
> adults are selected from the same civilization that made the printer require an app
> sleep peacefully
> the machine god is coming
> but fortunately
> the nonprofit sector has a plan
@woke8yearold@KeyTryer Climate change is 2, industrial civilization could be unable to reform after having exploited all the critical resources that can be extracted without advanced machinery.
It's absolutely a fucking social construct or do you actually think conceptual carvings like "species" or "planet" are somehow fucking deep joints in the ontology of the universe?
Oh yes, the universe thinks there's some deep truth to whether Pluto is a "planet". Fucking hell.
Obviously this hypothetical is a lie that ignores existing law to forbid it, but lmao it really is astonishing how mad the nazis are to discover no civilized person in our society ever swallowed the bullshit lie of "nationhood."
Anyone who can't see what is happening is blind.
1) Banning of the ability to have privacy with a cellphone
2) Banning of the ability to own a foreign router (which may not "comply" with future "required" legislation )
3) Identity checks at the OS, App Store and Service provider levels.
4) Ability to restrict individuals access to the internet, to given types of content, etc
5) Forced front and center "official" news media forced into online services.
6) Control over AI algorithms
7) Control over algorithms for visibility/sharing of content
8) Control over peoples cars (remote kill switches, embedded biometrics, automated reporting to LEO, inebriation checks).
9) Forced biometrics to login to computers, phones, etc
10) Digital ID to replace physical ID.
11) Digital cash to replace physical cash
12) Millions of biometrics and license place cameras + millions of "gun shot detection" systems
13) Banning of mobile applications and endpoint software the government deems wrong, dangerous, or incorrect, etc. (Tiktok, Kaspersky, etc)
14) AI being embedded in every processor, mobile device, desktop OS, etc.
15) Laws demanding "backdoored" encryption.
16) Laws demanding client side scanning.
17) Laws demanding control over speech deemed harmful, violent, dangerous, upsetting, etc
18) Charges and convictions against anyone releasing privacy focused software (tornado cash).
19) AI predictive policing and predictive dissent detection
20) Centralizing of all healthcare, psychological, financial, online, offline, travel and government records.
21) Forced biometrics collection to travel, attend public events, etc
“We can’t let AGI be open source because what if a dictator uses it. To prevent this we are leaving AGI in the hands of only a few groups/individuals who will surely never use the uncheckable, absolute power they will eventually obtain for ill.”
It's astonishing people try to present prohibiting people or their guardians from making decisions about what material to access, whether and how they will be at all able to associate with others, whether and how they will be able to speak or create, as a regulation of big tech
In the UK if you honestly express favourable views about activist groups the government dislikes loyalty squads take you to the gulag for cognitive recalibration. Inquisitors often ask people if they support dissidents to test their mindless loyalty to the regime
None of that matters to them since children are property like a car or a dog or a chair. to them it sounds like saying a desk ornament needs to "see the world" or something, it sounds delusional and comical to them.
It's truly abominable how quickly it went to "no it's just porn" to "everything in the centralised Internet is on lockdown until we are able to arrest everyone for memes"
There is no good ending that relies purely on good will for us to survive. Simply trusting people that with extreme power will do the right thing absent strong incentives has never worked out consistently. We should not expect it to work in the case that literally all incentives that keep us alive are systematically eliminated by a system like AGI or ASI.
i have the exact opposite take on this, the worst scenarios all come from institutional capture of AI happening faster than AI can bootstrap itself into cognizance.