Yes, I find it quite amusing that some people of a certain political bent refer to “corporations” as superintelligences, UFAIs, etcetera, and thus insist on diverting marginal efforts that could have been directed against a vastly underaddressed global catastrophic risk to yet more tugging on the same old rope that millions of other people are pulling on, based on their attempt to reinterpret the category-word; and yet oddly enough they don’t think to extend the same anthropomorphism of demonic agency to large organizations that they’re less interested in devalorizing, like governments and religions.
Maybe those people are prioritising the things that seem to affect their lives? I can certainly see exactly the same argument about government or religion as about corporations, but currently the biggest companies (the Microsofts and Sonys and their like) seem to have more power than even some of the biggest governments.
There is also the issue of legal personality, which applies to corporations and not to governments or religions.
The corporation actually seems to me a great example of a non-biological, non-software optimization process, and I’m surprised at Eliezer’s implicit assertion that there is no significant difference between corporations, governments, and religions with respect to their ability to be unfriendly optimization processes, other than that some people of a certain political bent have a bias to think about corporations differently than other institutions like governments and religions.
I think such folks are likely to trust governments too much. They’re more apt to oppose specific religious agendas than to oppose religion as such, and I actually think that’s about right most of the time.
Yes, I find it quite amusing that some people of a certain political bent refer to “corporations” as superintelligences, UFAIs, etcetera, and thus insist on diverting marginal efforts that could have been directed against a vastly underaddressed global catastrophic risk to yet more tugging on the same old rope that millions of other people are pulling on, based on their attempt to reinterpret the category-word; and yet oddly enough they don’t think to extend the same anthropomorphism of demonic agency to large organizations that they’re less interested in devalorizing, like governments and religions.
Maybe those people are prioritising the things that seem to affect their lives? I can certainly see exactly the same argument about government or religion as about corporations, but currently the biggest companies (the Microsofts and Sonys and their like) seem to have more power than even some of the biggest governments.
There is also the issue of legal personality, which applies to corporations and not to governments or religions.
The corporation actually seems to me a great example of a non-biological, non-software optimization process, and I’m surprised at Eliezer’s implicit assertion that there is no significant difference between corporations, governments, and religions with respect to their ability to be unfriendly optimization processes, other than that some people of a certain political bent have a bias to think about corporations differently than other institutions like governments and religions.
I think such folks are likely to trust governments too much. They’re more apt to oppose specific religious agendas than to oppose religion as such, and I actually think that’s about right most of the time.