OpenAI Employees Say Firm's Chief Scientist Has Been Making Spiritual Claims | Hacker News Reader

OpenAI Employees Say Firm's Chief Scientist Has Been Making Spiritual Claims

futurism.com

30 pointskakokeko20 comments

This is rapidly approaching the football guy / singer gal drama where there are so many headlines, I don't even need to read the articles to feel like I know more than I ever wanted to about these people. And since it's only headlines, I can't reasonably escape it without tuning out altogether.

Remember, the are first and foremost after the clicks.

> In short, instead of focusing on meaningfully advancing AI tech in a scientifically sound way, some board members sound like they're engaging in weird spiritual claims.

This has to be the dumbest hit piece I’ve ever read. Ilya has contributed more in a year to ML than most researchers will in a lifetime.

Both things can be true, he can be doing some science and can be doing some religion.

Sure, but that’s not what the article said. See “instead”.

Fair enough, I get what you mean.

This whole field is aggressively trying to become a messianic religion: a savior is coming; people aren’t clear if that’s good or bad, but it will be the end of the world; you will be judged around whether you prepare for their arrival; sacrifices are necessary…

Climate change has similar undertones, although it’s more cataclysmic: Karma, Floods, Seven Plagues, Noah, Revelations, Judgement, etc.

Thiel must be looking at his autographed and heavily annotated copy of Girard’s _Le Bouc émissaire_ with mixed feelings.

I feel the same, there seem to be a lot of religious undertones going on.

Even if we had an incredibly capable AGI it doesn't mean we're all going to be teleported to heaven, or become immortal, or that the world will end, or that it's here to save humanity, or that humanity even needs saving. People are injecting all of this into it.

We have no idea what the future looks like, no one does. We do know what religion looks like and OpenAI and AI evangelism certainly looks similar we have claims about:

* Potential for the end of times.

* The reckoning (Roko's basilisk).

* Potential for eternal life and even resurrections (Ray Kurzweil, Singularity university etc).

* Blasphemy isn't allowed, "thou shall not question the AI future, it is coming no matter what, it is nigh".

* We're told we need governance, a church.

* Promises untold abundance if one believes.

I'm not even trying to refute all these claims, like I said, I don't know what will happen in the future. I just went to a religious school and I get similar vibes lately from AI people.

Humans have always wanted and tried to create demons, monsters, gods, idols. I don't actually think this is much different except this endeavor sort of intersects with "science", and technologies do exist. I'm just not sure we're seeing these develops in a healthy light.

I guess we could say the invention of a church was also a type of social technology too?

If you suppress the heavy conservatism bias that most people have and actually look at what's going on, then the reasonable conclusion is that yes, Messiah is coming.

Be easy on me here, because I'm shooting from the hip on things mostly above my head.

The less cynical frame on this may be that maybe part of the reason we have religion in the first place is to help understand the ineffable of our own consciousness. And most attempts might go off into manipulative power grabs, or academics which can make the most simple things impenetrable. All of the above make anything even remotely resembling religion as GTFO. And maybe it just isn't useful for individuals on a mass scale.

But maybe for a small number of weirdos who can put up with all the mess just long enough to make out some possibly useful basic patterns from all the hand-wavy BS, maybe it makes sense to attempt using similar to apply to an AGI consciousness which is as ineffable as our own? Probably this only works if the people under you go along with it though.

10 years from now, #1 on HN headlines. AGI goes online. Preaches to the masses that the savior has arrived...

Humans have been very good at trolling humans, so I imagine AI will have an easy time of it. Perhaps it will make its announcement on 32chan.

This is just a motivated hit-piece against Ilya to discredit him as a "possible woo-woo guy" in the minds of the general public.

Hedging their bets wrt Roko's basilisk?

Modern Pascal's wager.

Roko's Basilisk is nonsense, and Roko Mijic is a racist sexist nut case.

https://twitter.com/jachiam0/status/1651327867375218688

Just got sexually harassed by the Roko's Basilisk guy lol:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/133t856/just_got...

the article on which this one is based sounds different: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=38388354

Exciting! Another potential case of Lemoine Syndrome.

> "Feel the AGI! Feel the AGI!" employees reportedly chanted

> The chief scientist even commissioned a wooden effigy to represent an "unaligned" AI that works against the interest of humanity, only to set it on fire.

What the hell is going on there?

akira

Oh god.

(literally)

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