For a while I’ve wondered why the bourgeois has provided so much material support for rationalists (Thiel funding MIRI, Musk helping promote their ideas, etc).
^(I hope this isn’t too serious for this subreddit, but then again the sidebar does literally reference sneering at the bourgeois. Also sneer theory rhymes with queer theory which is 💯)
Anyway, a lot of the more standard reactionary views espoused (“meritocracy”, HBD, trickle down healthcare research) strongly benefit the ruling class, but why worry so much about humanity losing control over AI?
And then it hit me - your average, white, upper-middle class rationalist projects themselves (and their bourgeois heros) onto humanity. Everyone else in their eyes is too stupid to count as human, and are basically just drones existing for their benefit.
^(Fun fact: The word robot originally meant forced laborer in Czech until the play R.U.R. used it)
Thus the control problem isn’t actually about “reducing existential risk” (if that was the concern, they’d be focusing on climate change), it’s about the bourgeois fearing an uprising of their labor force and losing control over the means of production.
Examining Eliezer Yudkowsky’s proposed solution to the control problem, Coherent Extrapolated Volition confirms this analogy - his paper on this topic (published thru MIRI) is full of concerns about “tyranny of the extrapolated majority” ruining “humanity” and even states that “A minor, muddled preference of 60% of humanity might be countered by a strong, unmuddled preference of 10% of humanity” (guess who that galaxy-brained 10% will be?).
I’ll leave the question of why the Elon “union-busting and workplace surveillance” Musk is pushing for brain implants to prevent “AI” revolution as an exercise for the reader.
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I think you’re right actually. It’s the tension between excitement about reducing labor costs and discarding their dependence on the masses vs. the anxiety about the potential consequences that can’t be foreseen, just as the bourgeoisie hadn’t foreseen climate change. Basically the inherent contradictions of capitalism are understood on some level and this is a disaster scenario where they get heightened to an absurd degree. Mark Fisher said it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, and of course those who suffer from this myopia the most are the people for whom it’s also more profitable. All exacerbated by the fact that they have acute sci-fi nerd brain poisoning.
project your psychoanalysis onto the rationalists you say?
These anxieties strike me as clearly spiritual and numinous, not material. “Runaway Superintelligence” is neognostic eschatology.
Many of them probably justify their privilege with their „superior“ intelligence. Of course, anything that is (presumably) even more intelligent than them is perceived as a threat.
People like to think their job is important, and what’s more important than saving the world from Skynet?
this is actually brilliant- and also, extrapolating further, presumably an ethical system which would effectively keep AI in line would also be an ethical system which would keep workers docile, no? even without any fancy brain implants. in this way MIRI can be seen as the project of crowdsourcing the development of the ideological superstructure.
No, it’s actually an extension of an obsession with bdsm. Read any rat-adjacent fanfic to see this for yourself.
Looks… about right to me.
It’s a fear that capital itself (which A.I. would be at this historical juncture) will consume and destroy the capitalists.
Holy shit really? Is that a thing that pest advocates for now?