14 Comments
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Christos Raxiotis's avatar

Kind of unrelated but I got 3 notifications for this post, idk if I have an issue or you/substack did sth

Ruxandra Teslo's avatar

sorry there was a weird substack issue where the main text wasn’t showing

Jake P. Taylor-King's avatar

There is something communist/socialist-adjacent to the AI abundance movement: "in the end, you won't have to work; we'll live in paradise".

Ruxandra Teslo's avatar

Well… Communists were also materialists.

Alex's avatar

Typo! Delete this when seen if you want to.

"In his account, the fact that work itself carried not only carried stigma, but was actually admired,"

("carried not only carried" should be something like "not only carried no")

Yong Heo's avatar

Death is not an evil. Life is not possible without it. But how we livw and die matters enormously.

Feral Finster's avatar

"AI can find a cure for cancer!" - motivated reasoning at it most shameless.

Im not scientist or philosopher, but this assumes, among other things, that cancer is one disease with one cause and that throwing enough computing power will result in a cure, sort of like if you put enough chips to work, you can make 2+2=5.

Ruxandra Teslo's avatar

I am not making any claims to the possibility of this, as the essay repeatedly states.

Feral Finster's avatar

I did not say that you did.

Alex's avatar

It assumes no such things. I can fix your wardrobe, even though the fraying on your jeans, holes in your shirts, and the ugly ties all have different causes. Likewise, the proof needed of possibility is a non-awful wardrobe, just like how other humans who aren't dying of cancer functions as an existence proof that you do not necessarily have to die of cancer.

Feral Finster's avatar

Without bothering to go into your assertions, this still assumes that enough computing power will find solutions.

Alex's avatar

Yes, this is near trivial since we have some cancer cures. We can definitely get a lot more of them, which would be, as they essay relies on, a big PR boost for AI. The essay argues that huge PR boosts may not be enough to offset disempowerment concerns (or the bad things which would actually come from disempowerment).

The point you are arguing is not important to the essay, but the essay used this point well enough that the essay is ~not at all incorrect in this regard.

Feral Finster's avatar

We were assured that AI would do a great job in targeting in Iran as well.

Alex's avatar

I can't tell if you're trolling or just being unproductive, so I'm ending my engagement here.