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Comment by afthonos | Hacker News Reader

You are incorrectly cynical. They are telling you things are bad, and because you refuse to countenance they could be worse, you assume they must be better to comply with your mandate to disbelieve.

A true cynic looks at the statements by the AI labs, assumes things are worse because the labs want to seem better than they truly are. And it takes a special kind of mass delusion to drive a sane person to think “AI is completely under our control” is worse than “AI could kill everyone.”

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You're asserting correctness with no facts to offer of your own, just speculation and your own biased assumptions.

What if consolidating AI into a highly regulated cartel, with no chance of upstart competition ruining their position, is the scenario that leads to the worst possible outcome?

Worse than extinction?

There are worse fates than extinction, for example living forever, for I have no mouth and I must scream

I dunno, being a Culture Mind sounds pretty damn good. Or even just a death-optional citizen in the Culture.

The Culture isn’t perfect but it seems like the best possible outcome. I think I’d want to be a fast picket and hang out with Special Circumstances.

Agreed. Ellison’s path to that future went through AI.

Is it really hard for you to imagine that enshrining a cartel and wedding the government to it, centralizing AI even more than it already is, is actually the path that leads to the doomsday scenario you imagine?

It’s not, that’s definitely one path to doom. But everyone racing as fast as possible is another, far surer, path to doom. We should avoid both.

The cynicism is about motivations and not that they are inherently not bad. Perhaps they are as bad as they claim. Or perhaps they're worse. All we have a couple of run of the mill breach examples and some people inside the talking about how dangerous it is. Yes, they are far more qualified than I am (or most people here), and perhaps there is a grain of truth. It is the motivation - and it is always money with corporations.

"Don't you understand?! It's all a marketing exercise!" I yell as grey goo consumes me and my family.

It is always money — but it isn’t always only money. They are not asking for anything that will prevent them from making money in the future, but they are asking for help stopping the runaway train they’re on. These are compatible requests.

All the whistleblowers have said the alignment projects are underfunded. Surely they don't need external help to fund that? Could've done years ago?

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