Hacker News Reader

Why should the tone have changed? The billionaires and AI godfathers talking about it now all were inspired by LW and scifi, and it's the same narrative: no need to care about people living today or real problems in the world when there's a scifi story about trillions of people in the future for whom we must sacrifice anything (except the billionaires and AI godfathers comfort, status, or money) in the present to protect.

View on HN

> "all were inspired by LW"

Evidence?

> "no need to care about people living today or real problems in the world"

Nobody says this.

> "trillions of people in the future"

Weird longtermists who talk about this are a small minority even among AI doomers.

> "AI godfathers comfort, status, or money"

I'm not suggesting anyone feel sorry for Geoff Hinton but quitting your Google job does seem like a pretty obvious sacrifice of money.

But I dunno you packed so much confusion into two sentences that I doubt you're going to let any messy details get in the way of picking a side based on an attempt at populism (including the fact that you're aligning yourself with Marc Andreesen and Zuckerberg).

Eh, one can dislike the longtermists and the non-longtermist plutocrats. I'd say there's good reason to dislike both, but for different reasons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com