Stop AI is barricading OpenAI on 10/21

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1 point·Sajarin··4 comments

On October 21st, 2024 at 12:00 pm Stop AI will peacefully barricade, via sit-in, OpenAI's office entrance gate at 575 Florida St in San Francisco CA.

A longer explanation/commentary here:

1) https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/nDLaCPpZTwK7o2vW9/...

2) https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bAy6w3spwFrnguJqe/why-stop-a...

I find the idea of protesting AI in order to raise awareness of the possible concerns interesting, but not this black-or-white, us-or-them hot take of it. Nor do I feel like the organizers can be taken seriously when they are tying their efforts to one physical location. If AI were limited to one physical location, their fears would be unfounded to begin with, wouldn't they?

I'd be far more likely to support efforts targeted at raising awareness of the energy consumption of AI infrastructures, and efforts to balance that resource usage with positive impact that it brings. (Which implies we need to start evaluating whether or not AI usage is positive.)

Yeah, the organizers are definitely taking an extreme route but that's probably the point. Extreme positions get more marketing hype so to speak. Once you have the attention, then you can start to influence a culture of questioning AI and AI usage.

I will say to your first point, it's possible they are trying to prove the model of this type of protest with the biggest and most well known company today to lay the groundwork of other protests at other companies. Someone has to light the match.

I think people are tired of extremism.

The culture of questioning AI and its usage already exists. I would agree if people said it needed to be more prevalent and have more people engaged with it, but going to an extreme to get a conversation started ignores that fact that the conversation is already going.

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