alt Hacker NewsObviously their statements are insincere, because they are building the bloody things. If they were sincere that AI is like nuclear weapons, then they would be devoting all their cash and energy into lobbying the government to nationalize them and treat AI like nuclear weapons. They would not be attempting to IPO and they for sure would not sell their weapon-like thing to the general public.
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That's not how nerds think. You can believe there's a high chance of what you're working on being dangerous and still be unable to stop working on it. As Oppenheimer put it, "when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it".
Accelerationism is an established political philosophy. Why is it obvious that they are insincere when they could equally think that the only way to control it is to be the ones building it?
They believe in the danger of out of control super-intelligence. The generous interpretation is that they believe they can contain it.
This assumes that they believe two things which I don't think they do: 1. that the US is the only place where this will be developed, and 2. that the government will be able to handle this better than anyone else.
Thank you for writing this. It’s such a classic example of ”do what I say not what I do” but in reverse. Why would you ever judge a CEO or company by their statements and not their actions. Scaremongering is incredibly efficient for marketing, the fact that both players are using it to drive monetary gain is kind of a tell.
This. People who care about animal cruelty dont go building largest ever meatfarms and slaughterhouses.
People who opposing arms manufacturing and gun violence dont jump to work for gun companies.
People who really want AI benefit all humanity dont stick working with lying CEOs who want to convert company from a non-profit.
Etc. So many examples.
I think this is a reasonable point, but a better comparison might be to nuclear energy. I think the frontier labs sincerely believe that AI can be developed at great benefit to humanity, and they clearly want to lead that push, but they also sincerely believe there is a real catastrophic risk.