Seeing repeated theories about the “deep-state” by supposed EA members is not a good look, for EA especially now.
The mundane explanation: a bunch of inexperienced people, some of whom probably should have never been on the board, severely miscalculated the consequences of their actions due to a combination of good-will, ego, and greed.
The US Natsec community (which is probably decentralized and not a “deep state”) has a very strong interest in accelerating AI faster than China and Russia e.g. for use in military hardware like cruise missiles, economic growth in an era of technological stagnation, and for defending/counteracting/mitigating SOTA foreign influence operations e.g. Russian botnets that use AI and user data for targeted manipulation. Current-gen AI is pretty well known to be highly valuable for these uses.
This is what makes “the super dangerous people who already badly want AI” one major hypothesis, but not at all the default explanation. Considering who seems to be benefiting the most, Microsoft (which AFAIK probably has the strongest ties to the military out of the big 5 tech companies), this is pretty clearly worth consideration.
Seeing repeated theories about the “deep-state” by supposed EA members is not a good look, for EA especially now.
The mundane explanation: a bunch of inexperienced people, some of whom probably should have never been on the board, severely miscalculated the consequences of their actions due to a combination of good-will, ego, and greed.
Nothing wrong with hypothesizing about it, as long as one doesn’t over update on it.
This does seem vastly more likely. Why would “the deep state” be anti-EA or anti-AI safety? Or organizing complex shenanigans to pursue those values?
I never attribute to malice what is explainable by foolishness.
The US Natsec community (which is probably decentralized and not a “deep state”) has a very strong interest in accelerating AI faster than China and Russia e.g. for use in military hardware like cruise missiles, economic growth in an era of technological stagnation, and for defending/counteracting/mitigating SOTA foreign influence operations e.g. Russian botnets that use AI and user data for targeted manipulation. Current-gen AI is pretty well known to be highly valuable for these uses.
This is what makes “the super dangerous people who already badly want AI” one major hypothesis, but not at all the default explanation. Considering who seems to be benefiting the most, Microsoft (which AFAIK probably has the strongest ties to the military out of the big 5 tech companies), this is pretty clearly worth consideration.
The US NatSec community doesn’t know that the US (and Britain) are with probability = .99 at least 8 years ahead of China and Russia in AI?