Alex Zhu

Bridging AI alignment and mysticism

[Alex Zhu @zhukeepa]

I've been hosting retreats with respected AI alignment thinkers in which we've “come out of the closet” to each other about how we think religion / spirituality are relevant for AI alignment.

God, karma, reincarnation, and the Second Coming of Christ are now in our Overton window.

@diviacaroline and @BenGoldhaber interviewed me about my thoughts on these topics, and more. Transcript included: https://t.co/0qy6rbU2Tk

[Alex Zhu @zhukeepa]

https://t.co/4aIxgOnS3v

(lightly edited):

"And it will be very interesting, I think, to see what happens. Because often, it's the points of no return, the points of the most dramatic tensions in life, that are the very places where dramatic change and transformation can happen.

I don't think it's in any way guaranteed that change or transformation will happen. We don't know. But... it's going to go one way or another, and it's not going to be very long from right now before it goes one way or another...

...which, as silly as it seems... to me, it's a very exciting time to be alive. There's a lot of energy in what's happening here. We can see it as negative if we turn it into fear, but boy, there's a lot of potential that really wasn't available, because we're running out of options other than to wake up.

It's starting to possibly become a biological necessity of survival. And when it gets to that point, it really starts to get people's attention.

We may destroy ourselves if we can't actually wake up to the fact -- to the living experience -- that we really are the same.

It's not good enough just to have the philosophy that we're really the same, because that philosophy breaks down when push comes to shove.

It has to be something that is actually real in each of us, something we actually feel, something we're actually connecting to that's not just in our ideas... respecting the fact that we're all different, but also, we're all the same."

[Alex Zhu @zhukeepa]

For anyone struggling to make sense of the world's present upheavals clearly and effectively, this 5 minute video from Adyshanti twenty years ago nails it.

I've watched it over and over for his delivery. Very grounding for my nervous system. Link + excerpt below:

[davidad 🎇 @davidad]

2nd, what I'm calling "Alignment with Awakening" (synonyms: "Bodhisattva as an Alignment Target", "Summoning Angels instead of Demons", "Religion for AIs"... very open to other naming suggestions!) has, in my view, become increasingly urgent and tractable over the last year. 5/15

[kasra @kasratweets]

a few bits that stood out:
- “when I realized that there were experiences I was having that could not be captured in thoughts, and that trying to capture it in thoughts would change it, I also realized that materialism was not complete.”
- @zhukeepa's speculation: when you die you confront everything you have been putting off because your bodymind no longer has the capacity to push away those things
- Buddhism: there is no ultimate structure of reality but somehow it also makes sense to talk about ultimate structure of reality.
- forgiveness is letting go of judgements, and judgement usually involves making yourself more than the other
- on getting to the "distributed second coming of Christ", which really means a world that is truly run along the teachings of Christ and the other major religions: “to get there, we're going to have to suffer enough from our addiction to this tribalist narrative, to decide that we have a problem and actually look for a solution.”

[Alex Zhu @zhukeepa]

@kasratweets Re: the bit about the ultimate structure of reality, these excerpts from Adyashanti (from The Way of Liberation) helped me become slightly less confused

In part because it’s cross-validating the CTMU and in part because it puts into language why it’s hard to put into language

[kasra @kasratweets]

banger interview. @zhukeepa might be at the bleeding edge of integrating a rigorous scientific worldview with religion and spirituality

[Alex Zhu @zhukeepa]

Softmax is still the coolest AI company

[Emmett Shear @eshear]

If you're seriously trying to understand AGI, core concepts you should familiarize yourself with: thermal time, quantum darwinism, quantum bayesianism, the free energy principle, the zeta function, integral theory, AdS/CFT, the yoneda lemma, general relativity, Stokes' theorem.

[Alex Zhu @zhukeepa]

Full interview here: https://t.co/B2pWaGG29x

A simple way to help: retweet this thread, or leave a comment!

Or take a look at the full interview.

Thanks everyone 🙂🙏

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[Alex Zhu @zhukeepa]

A respected Muslim interfaith leader and I discussed questions like:

How might a positive AI singularity align with religious end times prophecies?

Summary of our podcast interview with @diviacaroline below

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[Alex Zhu @zhukeepa]

My life mission is to do whatever I can to realize this vision, or something even better

I'm going to need all the help I can get. 🙏

"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." – Abe Lincoln

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