AI will make isolation dramatically easier. Right now, if you want to shield your kids from mainstream culture, you have to constantly fight an uphill battle. You need to review books, movies, and websites. You need to find alternative curricula for every subject. You need enough like-minded families nearby to form a community. It’s exhausting work that requires constant vigilance and often means accepting lower-quality substitutes for mainstream options. But AI changes all of this. Want a library of ten thousand novels that share your values but are actually as engaging as secular bestsellers? Your AI can write them. Want a tutor who can teach calculus at MIT level while never mentioning religion? Done. Want to monitor everything your kid sees online and get alerts about concerning patterns? No problem. The technical barriers to creating a totalizing information environment will disappear.
Not quite a quote—I changed one word. I could go on to revise the following paragraph in the same way, but it was too much effort. Spot the change to the above and you’ll see the point I’m suggesting.
The homeschoolers i know about get access to the internet and outer culture. there is definitely not avoiding of high-quality books because of ideology. I don’t know rationalist homeschoolers in the Bay Area, but i would be pretty surprised to learn they do the isolation thing certain religious groups do.
the substitution work only if you ignore all the ways its actually don’t, all the ways it’s not similar at all, and try to round up it to something else.
As a couple of people have responded “💬”, here’s an elaboration.
AI will make isolation dramatically easier. Right now, if you want to shield your kids from mainstream culture, you have to constantly fight an uphill battle.
My first thought here was rationalist homeschooling and communities, surely thought a good thing around here (if you can avoid the cult attractors). See, for example, Zvi’s tirades against conventional education. But no, the example later in the paragraph is a shibboleth for certain types of Christians, already mentioned in the very title of the post. Boo! Ick! We can’t have Christians bringing up their children in the way they think they should go!
If the suggested danger were generalised cult attractors facilitated by AI, then that may be a concern. But the concern expressed here is tainted by being only directed towards an out-group. How about “a tutor who can teach calculus at MIT level while never mentioning” religion? Is that also bad? (Not that there’s any reason either subject would come up in a mathematics course.)
Christians are an ingroup? Tell that to any Christian living outside of the American South. Ingroup/outgroup statuses are context- and scope-dependent.
Over the last 10-20 years, Christians (particularly fundamentalists) have had very little involvement with cutting-edge AI, both on the technical side and the business side. In this sense, they’re an outgroup of the people who are likely to control ASI.
Not quite a quote—I changed one word. I could go on to revise the following paragraph in the same way, but it was too much effort. Spot the change to the above and you’ll see the point I’m suggesting.
The homeschoolers i know about get access to the internet and outer culture. there is definitely not avoiding of high-quality books because of ideology. I don’t know rationalist homeschoolers in the Bay Area, but i would be pretty surprised to learn they do the isolation thing certain religious groups do.
the substitution work only if you ignore all the ways its actually don’t, all the ways it’s not similar at all, and try to round up it to something else.
As a couple of people have responded “💬”, here’s an elaboration.
My first thought here was rationalist homeschooling and communities, surely thought a good thing around here (if you can avoid the cult attractors). See, for example, Zvi’s tirades against conventional education. But no, the example later in the paragraph is a shibboleth for certain types of Christians, already mentioned in the very title of the post. Boo! Ick! We can’t have Christians bringing up their children in the way they think they should go!
If the suggested danger were generalised cult attractors facilitated by AI, then that may be a concern. But the concern expressed here is tainted by being only directed towards an out-group. How about “a tutor who can teach calculus at MIT level while never mentioning” religion? Is that also bad? (Not that there’s any reason either subject would come up in a mathematics course.)
Christians are an out group? Tell that to any non-Christian living in the American South.
Christians are an ingroup? Tell that to any Christian living outside of the American South. Ingroup/outgroup statuses are context- and scope-dependent.
Over the last 10-20 years, Christians (particularly fundamentalists) have had very little involvement with cutting-edge AI, both on the technical side and the business side. In this sense, they’re an outgroup of the people who are likely to control ASI.
They’re an out-group in rationalist circles, e.g. right here, where the article was posted.