Why would the doomsayers be the ones who need to answer that? That’s kind of their point! It’s the AI boosters who need to answer that, and so far it’s just a big collective shrug + silence.
> Several commenters suggested the original essay was written by an LLM. They were half right. Both that essay and this one were written with Claude as a drafting partner. I directed the argument; the LLM helped with prose.
That’s all well and good, but I think he needs to take a closer look at some of the resulting prose and clarify a little more. Most of it is good, but there are some unclear statements, like this (right after his descriptions of “Camp A” and “Camp B”):
> Sutton says Camp B wins. My essay was filed under Camp A. But decision theory belongs to neither camp.
The second sentence quoted above doesn’t specify, but I’m pretty sure it means that it was filed under Camp A by the commenters, and incorrectly at that. If so, it would probably read better as:
> Sutton says Camp B wins. Commenters seemed to file my essay under Camp A, and then dismissed it. But that’s incorrect; decision theory belongs to neither camp.
Or something along those lines.
I honestly think this isn’t nit-picky feedback, either. This is a crucial set of sentences which appear to lay out the main point of the essay, so it’s vitally important that they be clear … who “filed” it as a particular camp, and was that correct or incorrect? It should be revised to convey that, as well as better connecting that to what incorrect conclusions might have been drawn from that. The information can be gleaned from the surrounding context of course, but I found that crucial sentence to throw off the flow what was otherwise a really great essay.
> But, the pro-legalization folks would argue patently crazy things: it cures cancer, the smoke isn't bad for you at all, there are no downsides! etc.
Who seriously claimed that it “cures cancer”? There have been some claims that it helps alleviate nausea associated with chemotherapy, which is quite reasonable and will likely be proved out by evidence over time.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that he piggybacked on a large company’s name recognition by originally calling it “clawd”, clearly intending it to be confused with Claude. I have my doubts it would have gone anywhere without that.
I pretty much never even went there for technical topics at all, just funny memes and such, but one day recently I started seeing crazy AI hype stories getting posted, and sadly I made a huge mistake and I clicked on one once, and now it’s all I get.
Endless posts from subs like r/agi, r/singularity, as well as the various product specific subs (for Claude, OpenAI, etc). These aren’t even links to external articles, these are supposedly personal accounts of someone being blown away by what the latest release of this or that model or tool can do. Every single one of these posts boils down to some irritating “game over for software engineers” hype fest, sometimes with skeptical comments calling out the clearly AI-generated text and overblown claims, sometimes not. Usually comments pointing out flaws in whatever’s being hyped are just dismissed with a hand wave about how the flaw may have been true at one time, but the latest and greatest version has no such flaws and is truly miraculous, even if it’s just a minor update for that week. It’s always the same pattern.
This feels like a narrative being pushed. Tech oligarchs these days are flexing by showing off how much they are able to bully government, and Altman wants to get in on the game by spinning things this way. I’m not convinced they really bent the rules for OpenAI any more than usual given they only employ a few hundred people.
Oh yes I’ve thought of that, but I’m sure they have too. If AI advances to the point where everyone is out of work, then it will have also likely advanced to the point where it can aid in getting around the current supply chain fragilities.
That angle unfortunately just doesn’t give me much hope.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. It is absolutely in the cards for the ownership class to send out swarms of drones to kill us all.
The best we can hope for is to all end up in permanent slums picking through garbage to survive.
One peep of protest a little too loud and suddenly we’ll all be living the same scenario that’s visible all over the “combat footage” portions of the web: you are walking along outdoors, you hear a buzz, and then suddenly you look up to realize there’s a drone coming at you. You panic and try to run but by the time you hear it, it’s too late. It catches up to you easily and drops a bomb on you. Or maybe it’s a smaller more targeted (and disposable) one that zips straight at your forehead and explodes on contact, destroying your brain.
People may say I’m a doomsayer but just look back at the history of labor in the US. They sent out privatized security to shoot anyone who didn’t cooperate. And that was when they still needed the workers! Just imagine what they’ll do when they no longer need anyone!
https://futurism.com/openai-investor-chatgpt-mental-health
(From last year…)