I see. I think you should write a post trying to imagine in detail the failure modes you foresee if AI is aligned to the rich and powerful. What happens to the masses in those worlds, specifically? Are they killed, tortured, forced to work as waiters, or what? I have “merely mostly selfish” psych intuitions, so when I imagine Sam Altman being God-Emperor, I imagine that being like “luxury post-scarcity utopia except everyone has been brainwashed to express gratitude to the God-Emperor Sam I for giving them eternal life in utopia”, which is not ideal, but still arguably vastly better than worlds (like the status quo) with death and suffering. If you’re envisioning something darker, I think being more concrete would help puncture the optimism of people like me.
Hmm hm. Being forced to play out a war? Getting people’s minds modified so they behave like house elves from HP? Selective breeding? Selling some of your poor people to another rich person who’d like to have them? It’s not even like I’m envisioning something specific that’s dark, I just know that a world where some human beings have absolute root-level power over many others is gonna be dark. Let’s please not build such a world.
I see. I think you should write a post trying to imagine in detail the failure modes you foresee if AI is aligned to the rich and powerful. What happens to the masses in those worlds, specifically? Are they killed, tortured, forced to work as waiters, or what? I have “merely mostly selfish” psych intuitions, so when I imagine Sam Altman being God-Emperor, I imagine that being like “luxury post-scarcity utopia except everyone has been brainwashed to express gratitude to the God-Emperor Sam I for giving them eternal life in utopia”, which is not ideal, but still arguably vastly better than worlds (like the status quo) with death and suffering. If you’re envisioning something darker, I think being more concrete would help puncture the optimism of people like me.
Hmm hm. Being forced to play out a war? Getting people’s minds modified so they behave like house elves from HP? Selective breeding? Selling some of your poor people to another rich person who’d like to have them? It’s not even like I’m envisioning something specific that’s dark, I just know that a world where some human beings have absolute root-level power over many others is gonna be dark. Let’s please not build such a world.