AI feels like a real mania, a genuine collective break from reality among the ruling class. They might as well be pouring billions of dollars into an attempt to replace all jobs and knowledge with a large bronze idol of Dagon.
i think capitalism has always been a death cult, all beneficial side-channel outputs of capitalism are merely incidental, and that "AI" in the way these people envision always was the inevitable end-goal of that capitalist death cult
While this is broadly true, it is metaphorically true rather than literally true.
The AI guys are, like, literal actual cult, an offshoot of the literal actual tech-divinity "rationalist" cult of Less Wrong.
No, because they believe one is inevitable. They are anti-*bad* AGI, and their entire foundation is built around somehow making a good AGI happen first, through means which, uh
hey look a goose give us money
They're an odd bunch for sure, on a number of different dimensions, but from my research most of their more prominent members *currently* do not believe any sufficient AGI alignment is possible. But they're pretty wishy-washy for people who consider themselves "rationalists." 🫠
Huh, significant development has occurred, then. Yudkowsky's still banging the drum to be given money to somehow make bad AI not happen in the future, isn't he?
He's gone full on "stop now or we're all gonna die."
The people with the "stop" emojis in their twitter handles are serious doomers. "AGI" is a threat to their plan to freeze their heads in jars or w/e.
On the upside, I finally made it onto his blocklist.
the similarities between silicon valley and ergot-consuming mystery cults has not slipped past me in researching this otherwise silly "weird girl and her ex-gaming buddies gotta go inside the internet and fight shoggoths" novel
idk we may have misjudged these people as just put out an extremely self-aware "album" as an April Fool's joke.
we live in a really weird world.
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
