The original comment you wrote appeared to be a response to “AI China hawks” like Leopold Aschenbrenner. Those people do accept the AI-is-extremely-powerful premise, and are arguing for an arms race based on that premise. I don’t think whether normies can feel the AGI is very relevant to their position, because one of their big goals is to make sure Xi is never in a position to run the world, and completing a Manhattan Project for AI would probably prevent that regardless (even if it kills us).
If you’re trying to argue instead that the Manhattan Project won’t happen, then I’m mostly ambivalent. But I’ll remark that that argument feels a lot more shaky in 2024 than in 2020, when Trump’s daughter is literally retweeting Leopold’s manifesto.
The original comment you wrote appeared to be a response to “AI China hawks” like Leopold Aschenbrenner. Those people do accept the AI-is-extremely-powerful premise...when Trump’s daughter is literally retweeting Leopold’s manifesto.
But would she be retweeting it if Leopold was being up front about how the victory scenario entails something like ‘melt all GPUs and conquer and occupy China perpetually’ (or whichever of those viable strategies he actually thinks of, assuming he does), instead of coyly referring to ‘decisive military advantage’ - which doesn’t actually make sense or provide an exit plan?
The original comment you wrote appeared to be a response to “AI China hawks” like Leopold Aschenbrenner. Those people do accept the AI-is-extremely-powerful premise, and are arguing for an arms race based on that premise. I don’t think whether normies can feel the AGI is very relevant to their position, because one of their big goals is to make sure Xi is never in a position to run the world, and completing a Manhattan Project for AI would probably prevent that regardless (even if it kills us).
If you’re trying to argue instead that the Manhattan Project won’t happen, then I’m mostly ambivalent. But I’ll remark that that argument feels a lot more shaky in 2024 than in 2020, when Trump’s daughter is literally retweeting Leopold’s manifesto.
But would she be retweeting it if Leopold was being up front about how the victory scenario entails something like ‘melt all GPUs and conquer and occupy China perpetually’ (or whichever of those viable strategies he actually thinks of, assuming he does), instead of coyly referring to ‘decisive military advantage’ - which doesn’t actually make sense or provide an exit plan?