Sam Altman, the quintessential short-timeline accelerationist, is currently on an international tour meeting with heads of state, and is worried about the 2024 election. He wouldn’t do that if he thought it would all be irrelevant next year.
Whilst I do believe Sam Altman is probably worried about the rise of fascism and its augmenting by artificial intelligence, I don’t see this as evidence of his care regarding this fact. Even if he believed a rise in fascism had no likelihood of occurring; it would still be beneficial for him to pursue the international tour as a means of minimizing x-risks, assuming even that we would see AGI in the next <6 months.
[Facism is] a system of government where there are no meaningful elections; the state does not respect civil liberties or property rights; dissidents, political opposition, minorities, and intellectuals are persecuted; and where government has a strong ideology that is nationalist, populist, socially conservative, and hostile to minority groups.
I doubt that including some of the conditions toward the end makes for a more useful dialogue. Irrespective of social conservatism and hostility directed at minority groups, the risk of fascism existentially is probably quite similar. I can picture both progressive and conservative dictatorships reaching essentially all AI x-risk outcomes. Furthermore, is a country that exhibits all symptoms of fascism except for minority group hostility still fascist? Defining fascism in this way makes me worry that future fascist figures can hide behind the veil of “But we aren’t doing x specific thing (e.g. minority persecution) and therefore are not fascist!”
My favored definition, particularly for discussing x-risk would be more along the lines of the Wikipedia definition:
But I would like to suggest a re-framing of this issue, and claim that the problem of focus should be authoritarianism. What authoritarianism is is considerably clearer than what fascism is, and is more targeted in addressing the problematic governing qualities future governments could possess. It doesn’t appear obvious to me that a non-fascist authoritarian government would be better at handling x-risks than a fascist one, which is contingent on the fact that progressive political attitudes don’t seem better at addressing AI x-risks than conservative ones (or vice versa). Succinctly, political views look to me to be orthogonal to capacity in handling AI x-risk (bar perspectives like anarcho-primitivism or accelerationism that strictly mention this topic in their doctrine).
AI policy, strategy, and governance involves working with government officials within the political system. This will be very different if the relevant officials are fascists, who are selected for loyalty rather than competence.
It’s not obvious to me that selection for loyalty over competence is necessarily more likely in fascism or bad. A competent figure who is opposed to democracy would be a considerably more concerning electoral candidate than a less competent one who is loyal to democracy assuming that democracy is your optimization target.
A fascist government will likely interfere with AI development itself, in the same way that the COVID pandemic was a non-AI issue that nonetheless affected AI engineers.
Is interference with AI development necessarily bad? We can’t predict the unknown unknown of what views on AI development fascist dictatorship (that mightn’t yet exist) might hold or how they will act on them. I agree that on principal a fascist body interfering with industry does obviously not result in good outcomes in most cases but not see how/why this appeals to AI x-risk specifically.
It’s not obvious to me that selection for loyalty over competence is necessarily more likely in fascism or bad. A competent figure who is opposed to democracy would be a considerably worse electoral candidate than a less competent one who is loyal to democracy assuming that democracy is your optimization target.
It’s not obvious to me that selection for loyalty over competence is necessarily more likely in fascism or bad. A competent figure who is opposed to democracy would be a considerably more concerning electoral candidate than a less competent one who is loyal to democracy assuming that democracy is your optimization target.
It’s not obvious to me that selection for loyalty over competence is necessarily more likely in fascism or bad. A competent figure who is opposed to democracy would be a considerably worse electoral candidate than a less competent one who is loyal to democracy assuming that democracy is your optimization target.
Loyalty in general is more important in a centralised system built essentially on violence than a pluralist one built on legitimacy. In a democracy usually you’ll have competing forces all holding some weight, and the worst that betrayal can cause is a lost election. In a dictatorship there’s only one master to obey and the stakes are quite higher (consider how many “accidents” keep happening to members of the Russian upper echelon these days).
Democracies aren’t immune from this phenomenon, but it tends to happen more at the party level. For example, in Italy, back in the early 2000s Berlusconi did this, building his own party essentially as an extension of himself and filling it only with incompetent yes men who wouldn’t threaten his position. Brexit has done something like it to the Tory party in UK, distilling only the most loyal ones even if it meant purging competent politicians in favour of mindless demagogues. But things like the military, the judiciary and the civil service at least are slow changing enough that they carry the signs of the balance of power throughout the years.
I doubt that including some of the conditions toward the end makes for a more useful dialogue
I mean, that’s what makes it “fascism” though rather than generic authoritarianism. People should avoid having gut reactions to their ideology being called out for its excesses, especially here. Same way in which a leftist has to be aware of the extremes of communism, and not immediately recoil upon mention of them, so should a rational conservative know about fascism and trying their hardest to avoid falling into its traps.
Defining fascism in this way makes me worry that future fascist figures can hide behind the veil of “But we aren’t doing x specific thing (e.g. minority persecution) and therefore are not fascist!”
And:
Is a country that exhibits all symptoms of fascism except for minority group hostility still fascist?
Fair, but right now, what we’re seeing explicitly includes minority group hostility. Besides, while minority hostility may not be the key trait here, it is in fact part of how fascism works. You can’t get quite as free rein at being incompetent if you don’t have a sacrificial lamb to blame for any and all failures.
Whilst I do believe Sam Altman is probably worried about the rise of fascism and its augmenting by artificial intelligence, I don’t see this as evidence of his care regarding this fact. Even if he believed a rise in fascism had no likelihood of occurring; it would still be beneficial for him to pursue the international tour as a means of minimizing x-risks, assuming even that we would see AGI in the next <6 months.
I doubt that including some of the conditions toward the end makes for a more useful dialogue. Irrespective of social conservatism and hostility directed at minority groups, the risk of fascism existentially is probably quite similar. I can picture both progressive and conservative dictatorships reaching essentially all AI x-risk outcomes. Furthermore, is a country that exhibits all symptoms of fascism except for minority group hostility still fascist? Defining fascism in this way makes me worry that future fascist figures can hide behind the veil of “But we aren’t doing x specific thing (e.g. minority persecution) and therefore are not fascist!”
My favored definition, particularly for discussing x-risk would be more along the lines of the Wikipedia definition:
But I would like to suggest a re-framing of this issue, and claim that the problem of focus should be authoritarianism. What authoritarianism is is considerably clearer than what fascism is, and is more targeted in addressing the problematic governing qualities future governments could possess. It doesn’t appear obvious to me that a non-fascist authoritarian government would be better at handling x-risks than a fascist one, which is contingent on the fact that progressive political attitudes don’t seem better at addressing AI x-risks than conservative ones (or vice versa). Succinctly, political views look to me to be orthogonal to capacity in handling AI x-risk (bar perspectives like anarcho-primitivism or accelerationism that strictly mention this topic in their doctrine).
It’s not obvious to me that selection for loyalty over competence is necessarily more likely in fascism or bad. A competent figure who is opposed to democracy would be a considerably more concerning electoral candidate than a less competent one who is loyal to democracy assuming that democracy is your optimization target.
Is interference with AI development necessarily bad? We can’t predict the unknown unknown of what views on AI development fascist dictatorship (that mightn’t yet exist) might hold or how they will act on them. I agree that on principal a fascist body interfering with industry does obviously not result in good outcomes in most cases but not see how/why this appeals to AI x-risk specifically.
What do you mean by “worse” here?
As in decreases the ‘amount of democracy’ given that democracy is what you were trying to optimize for.
I would suggest rephrasing to “concerning” to distinguish from “unelectable” as an interpretation of “worse”.
Agreed. I have edited that excerpt to be:
Loyalty in general is more important in a centralised system built essentially on violence than a pluralist one built on legitimacy. In a democracy usually you’ll have competing forces all holding some weight, and the worst that betrayal can cause is a lost election. In a dictatorship there’s only one master to obey and the stakes are quite higher (consider how many “accidents” keep happening to members of the Russian upper echelon these days).
Democracies aren’t immune from this phenomenon, but it tends to happen more at the party level. For example, in Italy, back in the early 2000s Berlusconi did this, building his own party essentially as an extension of himself and filling it only with incompetent yes men who wouldn’t threaten his position. Brexit has done something like it to the Tory party in UK, distilling only the most loyal ones even if it meant purging competent politicians in favour of mindless demagogues. But things like the military, the judiciary and the civil service at least are slow changing enough that they carry the signs of the balance of power throughout the years.
I mean, that’s what makes it “fascism” though rather than generic authoritarianism. People should avoid having gut reactions to their ideology being called out for its excesses, especially here. Same way in which a leftist has to be aware of the extremes of communism, and not immediately recoil upon mention of them, so should a rational conservative know about fascism and trying their hardest to avoid falling into its traps.
See:
And:
Fair, but right now, what we’re seeing explicitly includes minority group hostility. Besides, while minority hostility may not be the key trait here, it is in fact part of how fascism works. You can’t get quite as free rein at being incompetent if you don’t have a sacrificial lamb to blame for any and all failures.