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Comment by badsandwitch | Hacker News Reader

The race for true AI is on and the fruits are the economic marginalization of humanity. No game theoretic actor in the running will shy away from the race. Anyone who claims they will for the 'good of humanity' is lying or was never a contender.

This is information technology we are talking about, it's virtually the exact opposite of nuclear weapons. Refining uranium vs. manufacturing multi purpose silicon and guzzling electricity. Achieving deterrence vs. gaining immeasurable wealth, power and freedom from labor.

This race may even be the answer to the Fermi paradox - that there are few individual winners and that they pull up the ladders behind them.

This is not the kind of race any legislation will have meaningful effect on.

The race is on and you better commit to a faction that may deliver.

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> This race may even be the answer to the Fermi paradox

The mostly unchallenged popular notion that fleshy human intelligence will still be running the show 100s – let alone 1000s – of years from now is very naive. We're nearing the end of the human supremacy, though most of us won't live to see that end.

To be fair fleshy human intelligence has hardly been running the show any more than a bear eating a salmon out of a river thus far. We’d like to consider we can control the world yet any data scientist will tell you what we actually control and understand is very little, or at best a sweeping oversimplification of this complex world.

> has hardly been running the show any more than a bear eating a salmon out of a river thus far

Exactly. We're on an super-linear growth curve. Looking at the earth on a timescale since biological life emerged, it would seem that intelligent squishy life appeared for a split second and then an entirely artificial intelligent life took over from then on.

I agree with the analysis though LLMs might not be the specific tech that makes it.

I think the truly humanity-respecting solution is to figure out and implement a stable and fair-er 50% post-labor society before we actually get there. UBI (not the unmanaged flash layer) sounds like one part of the solution.

Trying to preserve employment is demonstrably wrong when already today there are too few unskilled jobs that make economic sense for the large amount of humans unable to learn more complex tasks.

> Anyone who claims they will for the 'good of humanity' is lying or was never a contender.

An overreach.

Some people and organizations are more aligned with humanity’s well being and survival than others.

> The race is on and you better commit to a faction that may deliver.

How does that help?

The giant does not care whether the ant he steps on worships him or not. Regardless of the autonomy or not of the AI, why should the controllers help you?

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