Lex Fridman: commitment

Transcript context

…I suspect that what could very well happen, if we’re lucky, is that we get integrated into something larger. So, you again tweeted about effective accelerationism. You tweeted, “Effective accelerationism is the belief that the Paperclip Maximizer and Roko’s Basililisk will keep each other in check by being eternally at each other’s throats, so we will be safe and get to enjoy lots of free paperclips and a beautiful afterlife. ” Is that somewhat aligned with what you’re talking about? I’ve been at a dinner with [inaudible 02:07:21], that’s the Twitter handle of one of the main thinkers behind the idea of effective accelerationism. And effective accelerationism is a tongue in cheek movement that is trying to put a counter position to some of the doom peers in the AI space, by arguing that what’s probably going to happen is an equilibrium between different competing AIs, in the same way as there is not a single corporation that is under a single government that is destroying and conquering everything on earth by becoming inefficient and corrupt, there’re going to be many systems that keep each other in check and force themselves to evolve. And so, what we should be doing is, we should be working towards creating this equilibrium by working as hard as we can in all possible directions. At least that’s the way in which I understand the gist of effective accelerationism. And so, when he asked me what I think about his position, I said it’s a very beautiful position and I suspect it’s wrong, but not for obvious reasons. And in this tweet I tried to make a joke about my intuition, about what might be possibly wrong about it. So, the Roko’s Basililisk and the Paperclip Maximizers are both boogeymen of the AI doomers. Roko’s Basililisk is the idea that there could be an AI that is going to punish everybody for eternity by simulating them if they don’t help in creating Roko’s Basililisk. It’s probably a very good idea to get AI companies funded, by going to resist to tell them, “Give us a million dollars or it’s going to be a very ugly afterlife.”…

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