Regardless of whether you believe in doom or not, it's this kind of wild, willful misunderstanding that makes people roll their eyes and dismiss you. Yes, people at Anthropic (and OpenAI, for that matter!) really, genuinely do believe AI poses a potential existential threat to humanity; every single one that I know personally believes that. This has been pointed out hundreds of times, and to simply dismiss it as marketing hype by crypto bros to increase IPO valuations long ago passed into the realm of conspiracy thinking.
With the reality-bending financial incentives that these people have, I simply do not trust your or anyone else's assessment of the genuineness of their beliefs. And anyway, it's quite ironic that from godless San Francisco of all places, we are supposed to simply accept that the harmful acts of religious extremists are justified because, well, they do believe in their cause.
The point here is not the correctness of their beliefs. It's about what the actual content of their beliefs is. If someone says that Donald Trump is a secret Shia supremacist and using that to explain his actions, pointing out that that belief about Trump's belief is wrong is not a statement that Trump's beliefs are correct, but that your model of Trump's belief is incorrect.
Right, but it seems to me that you (and many people) are taking their stated beliefs at face value, when there are alternate interpretations of their conduct that are (a) highly plausible, (b) aligned with their incentives, and (c) less weird.
Personally, I do think some of the people in this field have really drunk the Kool-Aid and still believe in the paperclip monster. But for many others, I do not think the past couple of years of plateauing progress has escaped their notice. ESPECIALLY at the leadership level. I think they're larping and they know it. I just think they want the money and the power.
If I were building a technology that I thought posed a risk of exterminating the human race I would simply stop building it. But what do I know, I'm not a genius AI researcher.
> genuinely do believe AI poses a potential existential threat to humanity; every single one that I know personally believes that. This has been pointed out hundreds of times, and to simply dismiss it as marketing hype by crypto bros to increase IPO valuations long ago passed into the realm of conspiracy thinking.
"They are not in a thought bubble YOU are in the thought bubble"
I am absolutely BTFO'd, you got me.
No; I'm only stating that your model of reality is off, and I'm correcting it. No, the folks at the frontier labs do not believe they are trying to scam people with an NFT-tier fraud, and their warnings are not an attempt at marketing hype.
So to be clear, you're saying that ALL the people that you currently know of who work at these companies believe they are actively working on, in your words, something that "...poses a potential existential threat to humanity"
Oh nevermind I get it. They're only intentionally working on building something that they believe will end humanity. Well as long as it's not intentional crypto-tier scamming, it's all good then.
I'm convinced. Consider my model of reality corrected. Thanks homie.
Their usual stance is something along the lines of their company is creating AI correctly--not that AI will inherently destroy humanity--and that them working there helps that end. It's extremely reasonable to question their approach, but here you've jumped from "NFT crypto bros trying to run a scam" to "monsters excited to annihilate the human race," which is a wild leap, and betrays a point of view that seems more driven by anti-AI psychosis than consideration of any evidence.
>here you've jumped from "NFT crypto bros trying to run a scam" to "monsters excited to annihilate the human race," which is a wild leap, and betrays a point of view that seems more driven by anti-AI psychosis than consideration of any evidence.
This would be a great point if I had introduced either the NFT/crypto comparison OR the "existential threat" parameters, but if you read through the thread, you introduced both.
Introducing parameters for the other person, then use those to call them crazy when they operate inside them. Actual DA-tier tactic, my guy. Yikes.
My initial reply was "being told constantly that the apocalypse is coming and your jobs are gone and everything is going to be shitty because a bunch of ultra rich midwits want even more money and there's nothing you can do to stop it."
As in, we are constantly told that everything is going to be shit and there's nothing we can do, because there is a ton of moneyed interest in it.
You're the one that made the leap to "crypto" scamming in the reply and introduced the existential threat aspect. Both in the same comment, actually.
Then apparently tried to crazy-make me for (admittedly dickishly) pointing out that trying to build something that is an existential threat to humanity (your words, their belief, none of my words or belief) is actually worse than crypto scamming (again, both things which you introduced to the thread, btw).
But yeah shame on me for not taking you seriously and providing evidence I guess.
Odd how the bar for me is "providing evidence" but you're happy to outright lie that I was going from crypto scamming and existential threats in order to score a rhetorical point by claiming "AI psychosis" in a useless internet thread. Yeah I must be the unhinged one here, surely.
> This would be a great point if I had introduced either the NFT/crypto comparison OR the "existential threat" parameters, but if you read through the thread, you introduced both.
To quote you, ten minutes before:
> that the apocalypse is coming and your jobs are gone and everything is going to be shitty because a bunch of ultra rich midwits want even more money and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
It's a fair description of your stance. And, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
* intentionally cut off the "being told constantly" to lie by omission and hide the fact it's a complaint about a narrative rather than levying accusations of the thing itself
* fails to identify where "crypto scams" or "existential threat" was introduced, which was the entire point
* tells the other person what their own stance actually is
* fedora tipping edgelord sign-off line
Holy fuck I have just been absolutely obliterated in the marketplace of ideas. I concede. Please no more.
people at Anthropic (and OpenAI, for that matter!) really, genuinely do believe
The same could have been said (and has been said) about other tech company employees for all sorts of other reasons in alignment with those companies' goals. Don't you remember how much people used to laugh at Tesla employees for worshipping Elon Musk as some kind of god of engineering and entrepreneurial genius? Or Apple employees in the Steve Jobs reality distortion field?
I would have thought at this point that it'd be well known that the employees of all cult-like tech companies can't be trusted to make a sober evaluation of their companies' justified valuation. We can talk about conflicts of interest and we'd barely be getting started! How about biased selection by hiring managers for the most fervent believers in the company's mission from the get-go?
Sure; they might be caught in their own hype cycle. I am pointing out that the repeated claims in this thread (and by Geohot, ironically enough) that they are NFT crypto bros running a scam is incorrect.
Doesn’t have to be a naked scam though. Dario could be caught in the dictator’s dilemma: he was a believer at first but now he’s on the tiger’s back so he dare not get off.
If they genuinely believe that, then they are literally a conspiracy to destroy the world. If their current actions are the outcome of genuine belief to what they say, then they are indeed massive "midwits" and a literal cult conspiracy. Due to the amounts of money they siphoned, that would make them dangerous cult regardless of whether their ai predictions are correct.
Calling them scammers is literally giving them benefit of the doubt and trying to avoid conspiratorial thinking. You frame the belief that "these are normal people with normal motivation" to be paranoid conspiratorial thinking. Meanwhile, you claim they are literal conspiracy and cult and that is somehow less paranoid.
Now, dangerous cults and scammers are severely overlapping categories. Most if not all cults scam people. They lie to get more powerful whenever it suits them. They have true believers (like your friends) fully willing to cause any amount of harm for the visionary in the center. These people may have started as a well meaning do-gooders, but they usually just end up being co-conspirators in crimes.