There’s a couple problems that even though Sam is surrounded by people like Ilya and Jan warning him of the consequences, he’s currently unwilling to change course.
Staring down AGI ruin is just fundamentally a deeply scary abyss. Doubly so when it would’ve been Sam himself at fault.
Like many political leaders, he’s unable to let go of power because he believes that he himself is most capable of wielding it, even when it causes them to take actions that are worse than either leader would do independently if they weren’t trying to wrest power away from the other.
More than most, Sam envisions the upside. He’s a vegetarian and cares a lot about animal suffering (“someday eating meat is going to get cancelled, and we are going to look back upon it with horror. we have a collective continual duty to find our way to better morals”), seeing the power of AGI to stop that suffering. He talks up the curing cancer and objectively good tech progress a lot. He probably sees it as: heads, I live forever and am the greatest person for bringing utopia, tails, I’m dead anyway like I would be in 50 years.
Ultimately, I think Sama sees the coin flip (but believing utopia AGI is higher chance) and being the ever-optimist, is willing to flip it for the good things because it’s too scary to believe that the abyss side would happen.
There’s a couple problems that even though Sam is surrounded by people like Ilya and Jan warning him of the consequences, he’s currently unwilling to change course.
Staring down AGI ruin is just fundamentally a deeply scary abyss. Doubly so when it would’ve been Sam himself at fault.
Like many political leaders, he’s unable to let go of power because he believes that he himself is most capable of wielding it, even when it causes them to take actions that are worse than either leader would do independently if they weren’t trying to wrest power away from the other.
More than most, Sam envisions the upside. He’s a vegetarian and cares a lot about animal suffering (“someday eating meat is going to get cancelled, and we are going to look back upon it with horror. we have a collective continual duty to find our way to better morals”), seeing the power of AGI to stop that suffering. He talks up the curing cancer and objectively good tech progress a lot. He probably sees it as: heads, I live forever and am the greatest person for bringing utopia, tails, I’m dead anyway like I would be in 50 years.
Ultimately, I think Sama sees the coin flip (but believing utopia AGI is higher chance) and being the ever-optimist, is willing to flip it for the good things because it’s too scary to believe that the abyss side would happen.