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Comment by palmotea | Hacker News Reader

> They have been warning about AI extinction risk for years, and AI progress has only been accelerating.

So, they're either liars or homicidally reckless.

Sean Goedecke has some good insights into where this "build faster to stop other models killing everyone" attitude comes from:

https://www.seangoedecke.com/they-really-do-think-ai-might-k...

It's well worth the read.

> Sean Goedecke has some good insights into where this "build faster to stop other models killing everyone" attitude comes from:

I'm familiar with the existential risk thinking.

The the flaw in that idea that they can avert disaster by building faster is they're likely just racing faster towards more plausible non-extinction disasters. Stuff like Capitalism x AGI totally crushing the economic prospects of nearly all people, AGI-powered totalitarianism, etc.

> either liars

They're CEOs of tech companies with insane valuations

> or homicidally reckless

They're CEOs of bleeding edge tech companies with huge capital and military applications

>So, they're either liars or homicidally reckless.

Yes!

Why not both?

Look up the nuclear arms race. We brought humanity to very possibly a 25% exstinction risk by some well argued for accounts I have read. That is insanity. When you learn about how insane nuclear proliferation was including actual projects like Project Sundial that the US actually started construction on until the Joint Chiefs revolted against it (and they didn't even revolt against it on moral grounds, just on strategic ground) it becomes even more batshit insane.

There were nuclear researchers who did not pay into their retirement fund since they thought it was kinda high chance humanity extinction was happening in their lifetime during the heyday of nuclear proliferation. We are seeing the same play out in AI. I know at least one AI researcher who is not paying into their retirement fund.

Never ascribe to malice that can easily be explained by game theory tragedy of the commons or prisoner dilemma type dynamics. Race dynamics and systems theory is one helluva drug and leads to horrific outcomes all the time without the need to ascribe malice to any individual actor.

My guess is its a combination of both. Either way I'm not a fan.

Unfortunately if the frontier labs that care about safety stop or slow down unilaterally, that doesn’t make the problem go away. It makes it worse when labs that do not care at all about safety, or deny that it is even a problem, are leading the way. That’s why there’s needs to be some form of international regulation.

Incidentally this regulation won’t really touch the US providers - at least it sounds like that’s the plan if you listen to current US admin

The impression I get is that there is absolutely no coherent plan at all for any type of regulation us domestic or otherwise

We literally cannot touch them, as that would be the first domino to topple in our economy. There is too much money concentrated in this sector, and adverse regulation would create an investor shockwave that would send us into a full blown depression.

Which ironically is also the outcome of letting these companies continue unchecked. If they produce AGI/ASI, our economy will go through an upheaval that leaves vast tracts of the population unemployed. This is their stated goal.

We are damned if we do something, and damned if we don’t.

> We literally cannot touch them, as that would be the first domino to topple in our economy. There is too much money concentrated in this sector, and adverse regulation would create an investor shockwave that would send us into a full blown depression.

Important people will loose too much money on their tulip investments, so tulips must go up forever?

Seems like a "less pain now or more pain later" type situation.

Don’t get me wrong; the correct solution would be to prevent our economy from becoming so lop-sided to begin with. Or now to effective amputate the infected limb before the blood turns septic. Both require more spine and guts than anyone has got.

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