I of course agree that warning people about their enemies can be helpful to the people being warned.
I don’t agree that’s what Eliezer is doing with Amodei and Hegseth. Across multiple posts, he is promoting enmity toward both of them. Here he is saying that Hegseth’s position is even worse than Amodei’s: https://x.com/allTheYud/status/2027357747960766554?s=20
It’s of course logically consistent to say two people have bad positions and that one is worse. The strange thing is to be doing that while performatively “helping” Hegseth by “warning” him that AI leaders would “discard him like used toilet paper”. Taken in that context, the effect is more like symmetrically creating enmity between the two camps, as opposed to encouraging a positive resolution to the conflict.
I’ll also reiterate that Eliezer is far from alone in this pattern of promoting enmity between leaders in and around AI. He merely offers an easy-to-analyze public example of the pattern.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I think I see a bit more what you’re getting at.
But, rereading Yudkowsky’s tweet, I think your description
performatively “helping” Hegseth by “warning” him that AI leaders would “discard him like used toilet paper”
is not accurate. I think the group being addressed in the tweet is “political leaders of the world”. Admittedly, the tweet is confusingly worded in this regard, and I had to reread it. In the beginning, he says
You have proven that you stand between AI labs and the nice thing they were getting for all their hard work.
and later
Sam Altman does not now look more powerful because you crushed his competitor. He looks less important because you, politicians, crushed his competitor, and did so in a way that made clear that Altman would have to take the orders of any Trump appointee as well.
I think he’s using that as a rhetorical device to express “there’s a conflict here between [AI leaders as a group] and [political leaders as a group]”, because (he claims) that’s how AI leaders are taking it. In this light, I think he’s trying to alert B (political leaders in general) that A (AI leaders) are their enemy.
I of course agree that warning people about their enemies can be helpful to the people being warned.
I don’t agree that’s what Eliezer is doing with Amodei and Hegseth. Across multiple posts, he is promoting enmity toward both of them. Here he is saying that Hegseth’s position is even worse than Amodei’s: https://x.com/allTheYud/status/2027357747960766554?s=20
It’s of course logically consistent to say two people have bad positions and that one is worse. The strange thing is to be doing that while performatively “helping” Hegseth by “warning” him that AI leaders would “discard him like used toilet paper”. Taken in that context, the effect is more like symmetrically creating enmity between the two camps, as opposed to encouraging a positive resolution to the conflict.
I’ll also reiterate that Eliezer is far from alone in this pattern of promoting enmity between leaders in and around AI. He merely offers an easy-to-analyze public example of the pattern.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I think I see a bit more what you’re getting at.
But, rereading Yudkowsky’s tweet, I think your description
is not accurate. I think the group being addressed in the tweet is “political leaders of the world”. Admittedly, the tweet is confusingly worded in this regard, and I had to reread it. In the beginning, he says
and later
I think he’s using that as a rhetorical device to express “there’s a conflict here between [AI leaders as a group] and [political leaders as a group]”, because (he claims) that’s how AI leaders are taking it. In this light, I think he’s trying to alert B (political leaders in general) that A (AI leaders) are their enemy.