If people associate having to think about AI safety with needing to be very paranoid that might in itself discourage people from thinking.
Agreed.
Two decades ago the ChaosComputerClub declared “We lost the War” and articulated the intellectual framework based on which Wikileaks was built.
Today, many more people come to the yearly Chaos Computer Congress but on the other hand, a lot less political action is emerging from the club. While it’s not clear to what extent the CIA is responsible for that, it would make sense from their perspective to act here.
That’s pretty disturbing to hear, that AI safety could end up neutered, like what potentially happened there. There’s probably plenty of FBI informants in the Bay Area, who change identities and gain status in communities like we change clothes. But it’s possible that an AI pause actually is the minimum necessary ask for humanity to make it through (from AGI alone, of course, taking on the NSA is basically asking to end up like the CCC).
There are lots of ways to simply distract someone from engaging in a powerful way with politics that are not about overt destruction.
I agree, but it’s not just about distracting, being able to steer people’s thinking has all kinds of creative uses, especially in a civilization where the lawyers-per-capita is this high. For example, I wrote:
Everything that we’re doing here is predicated on the assumption that powerful forces, like intelligence agencies, will not disrupt the operations of the community e.g. by inflaming factional conflict with false flag attacks attributed to each other due to the use of anonymous proxies.
Agreed.
That’s pretty disturbing to hear, that AI safety could end up neutered, like what potentially happened there. There’s probably plenty of FBI informants in the Bay Area, who change identities and gain status in communities like we change clothes. But it’s possible that an AI pause actually is the minimum necessary ask for humanity to make it through (from AGI alone, of course, taking on the NSA is basically asking to end up like the CCC).
I agree, but it’s not just about distracting, being able to steer people’s thinking has all kinds of creative uses, especially in a civilization where the lawyers-per-capita is this high. For example, I wrote: