This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
See, you're defining "superintelligence" to mean exactly what you want it to to render all discussion moot. It reminds me a lot of the ontological argument, at least in terms of vibes.
But it's not tied to anything besides a faith that OpenAI or someone will conjure a godlike being out of a silicon vault and then inevitably let it loose on the world with no constraint as to its actions because it would be economically efficient.
Whatever it is you're arguing for here, it's not really for humanity.
Nor is it "realistic" - the United States regulatory apparatus does not give a whit about economic efficiency. "Doing anything" does not require general knowledge - there are AIs right now that can land aircraft on aircraft carriers (which is more than either of us can do, I'd wager) and they do not need to understand language at all. Doing almost anything in almost any field does not require a knowledge of history (try talking to the people in said fields about history). And godlike beings will not arise out of supercomputers, although agentic entities with great intelligence and power might, if we let them.
I personally think that believing in predestination but for superintelligence is foreseeably more likely to make Bad AI Events happen and should be discouraged. Your counterargument, apparently, is that it does not matter what people believe, godlike superintelligence is going to happen anyway, and in two years to boot. If you are right, the superintelligence will personally persuade me otherwise by the end of 2027 with its godlike capabilities (probably by joining TheMotte and using its inhuman debate skills to pwn me).
But I think we both know that won't happen.
Why do you think the big tech companies are investing hundreds of billions in massive datacentres, paying billions just to get elites like Noam back on their team? They're not doing this for fun, they're competing intensely for a cornucopia of wealth and power. They expect returns from that investment. Cornucopias are for enjoying the fruits of, not locking up in the basement.
The definition of superintelligence is pretty straightforward - something qualitatively smarter than a human like how we're qualitatively smarter than a monkey or dog. Better than the best of us at every intellectual task of significance.
The general trend is not specialized intelligences like the carrier-strike UAV that the USN made into a tanker and then pointlessly scrapped, the trend is big general entities like Gemini 2.5 or Claude 3.7 that can execute various complex operations in all kinds of modalities.
I'm arguing that superintelligences acting in the world must be taken seriously, that we can't afford to just laugh them off. Maybe 2027 is too soon, maybe not. I can't predict the future.
The US regulatory system is no match for superintelligence or even the people who are making it, this is how I can tell you're not grappling with the issue. Musk is basically in the cabinet, he's one of the players in the game. Big tech can tell Trump 'Tariffs? Lol no' and their will is done. That's mere human levels of influence and money, nothing superhuman. The humble fent dealer wipes his ass with the US regulatory system daily as he distributes poison to the masses. A superintelligence (working alone or with the richest, most influential organizations around) has no fear of some bureaucrats, it would casually produce 50,000 pages on why it's super duper legal actually and deserves huge subsidies to Beat China.
Approaches like 'just don't plug it into the internet' or 'stick a nuke beneath the datacenter' are not going to cut it. Deepseek is probably going to open-source whatever they come up with and that's a good thing. I don't want OpenAI birthing a god in a world of mortals, I don't want mortals trying to chain up beings smarter than themselves and incurring their ire, I want balance of power competition in a world populated by demigods, spirits and powers.
Probably, although investing in something does not necessarily mean each investor probabilistically expects returns from that specific investment. (If this does not make sense, I strongly recommend reading "Innovation – The New Conservatism?" by Peter Drucker.) Humorously, I seem to recall that OpenAI explicitly advised its investors that their goal might render monetary returns moot.
Now this I think is a decent definition. But it doesn't get you to godlike powers (plenty of people still get pwned by monkeys and dogs. And of course going by test scores the top-end AIs are already superintelligent relative to large portions of the population.) There's no reason to think doing well on a test will allow you to make weapons with physics unknown to humanity as you've suggested, any more than Einstein was able to.
I don't think this is true. There are a lot of specialized AI products or "wrappers" out there, with specific tweaks for people like lawyers, researchers, government affairs analysts and communications/PR types, not to mention specialized video generation models. (OpenAI alone lists seven models on their website, six of which are GPT models and one of which is a specialized video generation model.)
My non-exhaustive experience reading real-life evaluations suggests that the general models do not necessarily cut it in these specialized fields, and that the specialized models exist and likely will continue to exist for a reason (even if that reason is only "user friendliness" although as I understand it currently the specialized products have capabilities that general models do not.)
For the reasons I have laid out (as well as regulatory ones), military and civilian applications already using AI (such a missile guidance systems, military and civilian autopilots, car safety features, household appliances, etc.etc.) are unlikely to switch in the near future to LLMs. (In fact I suspect there will probably never be a reason to switch in most of these cases, although they might end up being coded by LLMs, or attached to LLMs to produce a unified product that combines the coding and features of several AI.)
Do you think the guy suggesting we should retain the capability to nuke datacenters is arguing that we can afford to laugh them off, or nah?
I don't think you fully understand how the US regulatory system works. Merely producing large numbers of pages to sate its lust or cutting arguments to satisfy its reason does not mean it will give you what you want.
Now, it's quite possible that AI will skate past the eye of Sauron for very human reasons (the Big Tech pull in D.C. you allude to for instance).
I don't think these are mutually exclusive. (And anyone who knows anything about demigods, spirits and powers knows that for all their power and intelligence it's possible to outwit them, which makes them a pretty interesting comparator for AI here). I agree (as I think I mentioned) that it's good to have competing models. I would also prefer not to give them direct access to nuclear weapons. I think this is a reasonable position.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link