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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33388 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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If we truly had a borderline extinction event where we were up to the knife's edge of getting snuffed out as a species you would have the will to enforce a ban, up to and including the elite. That will may not last forever, but for as long as the aftershocks of such an event were still reverberating you could maintain a lock on any further research. That's what I believe the honest 2% moonshot victory bet actually looks like. The other options are just various forms of AI assisted death, with most of the options being variations in flavour or whether or not humans are still even in the control loop when we get snuffed.

If we truly had a borderline extinction event where we were up to the knife's edge of getting snuffed out as a species you would have the will to enforce a ban, up to and including the elite.

Okay, but then if you believe this then you shouldn't actually support restrictionism yet, because in your own reckoning we need the borderline extinction event as a prerequisite to make true restrictionism actually likely. (Though I'm going to bet the new elite would still just say "Wow that sucks for that previous elite that destroyed even themselves but we'll do better this time." The seduction of infinite power is far beyond any amount of risk to nullify.)

I think supporting restrictionism makes sense in as much as it raises the idea in the public's consciousness so that once the big bad event occurs there can be a push to implement it. Realistically I expect restrictionism to go pretty much nowhere in the absence of such an event anyways, agitating for locking things down is just laying the groundwork for that 0.02% moonshot victory bet in the event that we do get a near-miss with AI.

So we need to argue for banning X now, even though if X really caused a problem people would be in favor of banning it anyway and banning X now would only be an incomplete ban of X that would likely make the problems it causes even worse?

This is like advocating for a unilateral ceasefire among the soldiers on your own side even though you know the enemy won't stop shooting in order to "prep" them for a possibly actually universal ceasefire that the enemy might be willing to agree to later after a really bad battle. (Except if you stop shooting at them preemptively, that bad battle to make them want to actually stop shooting themselves will never happen.)

We need to argue to ban X now so the people arguing to ban X tomorrow after marketing_bot.exe's failed uprising have the scaffolding and intellectual infrastructure to see it through. Restrictionism is pretty much dead until that point anyway, just look at OpenAI's API access. I don't think in our economic environment and with the specter of cold war 2.0 on the way there will be any serious headway on the ban front up until we have our near miss. Getting the ideas out there so the people of the future have the conceptual toolbox to argue and pursue a total ban is a net positive in my books.

Yeah I don't see it. Unless you're specifying the conditions under which you want the ban/think it would occur, then you're just creating fertile ground for the wrong interpretation of your own words. And saying "just look at OpenAI's API access" changes nothing. OpenAI is specifically the locked down, regime-backed enemy AI that people are worried about. Some decent amount of OpenAI API access is exactly compatible with the selective restrictionism that would serve only to empower existing players.

Instead of arguing naive restrictionism that could easily be turned against any sensible interpretation of itself, why not just be fully honest about exactly what you want and expect, so that it doesn't take someone like me multiple back-and-forth posts to even find out what that is?

PS: For anything that genuinely kills millions or billions of people, there won't need to be any existing "scaffolding and intellectual infrastructure" to argue for a complete ban of it. Humans are pretty good at coming up with that on the fly when something is that dangerous. Campaigns against far lesser evils have sprung up in a matter of weeks. You're making the wrong argument for the wrong time period.

You're making the wrong argument for the wrong time period.

Pretty much. I don't think there's really much to be done until things go sideways. If there had been enough sit down discussions before the genie was out of the bottle we could have possibly edged towards some kind of framework but at this point I don't disagree. Things are already in motion. Hopefully it's survivable. Anyways, the core thesis was that outright banning is an (if not the) sensible option for the teeming masses who will be screwed in either a let-it-rip or an AI by high level GOV actor approach, a ban is still their best shot. Basically if we get the chance and the will to (exceedingly unlikely) we should do a little jihading (also exceedingly unlikely).

Anyways, the core thesis was that restrictionism-to-outright-banning is an (if not the) sensible option for the teeming masses

But even if you believe that, then you must acknowledge that fake, selective restrictionism is perhaps their worst option. Advocating for restrictionism naively without acknowledging that is not threading the needle appropriately.

The difference between fake restrictionism and letting it rip for the average person will be zero IMO. The ruling caste will be a bit bigger after a small subset of people make themselves indispensable. That's about it. The average joe is still getting declawed and wireheaded either way. At least if (or for as long as) a full ban is in effect he won't be completely useless and toothless.

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