I am neither an American citizen nor a Chinese citizen.
does not describe most people who make that argument.
Most of these people are US citizens, or could be. under liberalism/democracy those sorts of people get a say in the future, so think AGI will be better if it gives those sorts of people a say.
Most people talking about the USG AGI have structural investments in the US, which are better and give them more chances to bid on not destroying the world. (many are citizens or are in the US block). Since the US government is expected to treat other stakeholders in its previous block better than China treats members of it’s block, it is better for people who are only US aligned if the US gets more powerful, since it will probably support its traditional allies even when it is vastly more powerful, as it did during the early cold war. (This was obvious last year and no longer obvious).
In short, the USG was commited to international liberalism, which is a great thing for AGI to have for various reasons which are hard to say, but basically of the form that liberals are commited to not doing crazy stuff.
People who can’t reason well about the CCP’s internal ideologies /political conflicts(like me), and predict ideological alignemnt for AGI, think that USG AGI will use the frames of international liberalism (which don’t let you get away with terrible things even if you are powerful), and worry about frames of international realism (which they assign to China, since they cannot tell, and argue that if you have the power you must/should/can use it to do anything, including ruining everybody else).
As a summary, if you are not an american citizen, do not trust the US natsec framing. A lot of this is carryover from times when the US liberal international block (global international order), was stronger, and so as a block framing it is better iff the US block is somehow bigger, which at the time it was.
Since the US government is expected to treat other stakeholders in its previous block better than China treats members of it’s block
At the risk of getting too into politics...
IMO, this was maybe-true for the previous administrations, but is completely false for the current one. All people making the argument based on something like this reasoning need to update.
Previous administrations were more or less dead inertial bureaucracies. Those actually might have carried on acting in democracy-ish ways even when facing outside-context events/situations, such as suddenly having access to overwhelming ASI power. Not necessarily because were particularly “nice”, as such, but because they weren’t agenty enough to do something too out-of-character compared to their previous democracy-LARP behavior.
I still wouldn’t have bet on them acting in pro-humanity ways (I would’ve expected some more agenty/power-hungry governmental subsystem to grab the power, circumventing e. g. the inertial low-agency Presidential administration). But there was at least a reasonable story there.
The current administration seems much more agenty: much more willing to push the boundaries of what’s allowed and deliberately erode the constraints on what it can do. I think it doesn’t generalize to boring democracy-ish behavior out-of-distribution, I think it eagerly grabs and exploits the overwhelming power. It’s already chomping at the bit to do so.
I don’t think that people from the natsec version have made that update, since they have been talking this line for a while.
But the dead organization framing matters here.
In short, people think that democratic institutions are not dead (especially electoralism). If AGI is “Democratic”, that live institution, in which they are a stakeholder, will have the power to choose to do fine stuff. (and might generalize to everybody is a stakeholder) Which is + ev, especially for them.
They also expect that China as a live actor will try to kill all other actors if given the chance.
I am neither an American citizen nor a Chinese citizen.
does not describe most people who make that argument.
Most of these people are US citizens, or could be. under liberalism/democracy those sorts of people get a say in the future, so think AGI will be better if it gives those sorts of people a say.
Most people talking about the USG AGI have structural investments in the US, which are better and give them more chances to bid on not destroying the world. (many are citizens or are in the US block). Since the US government is expected to treat other stakeholders in its previous block better than China treats members of it’s block, it is better for people who are only US aligned if the US gets more powerful, since it will probably support its traditional allies even when it is vastly more powerful, as it did during the early cold war. (This was obvious last year and no longer obvious).
In short, the USG was commited to international liberalism, which is a great thing for AGI to have for various reasons which are hard to say, but basically of the form that liberals are commited to not doing crazy stuff.
People who can’t reason well about the CCP’s internal ideologies /political conflicts(like me), and predict ideological alignemnt for AGI, think that USG AGI will use the frames of international liberalism (which don’t let you get away with terrible things even if you are powerful), and worry about frames of international realism (which they assign to China, since they cannot tell, and argue that if you have the power you must/should/can use it to do anything, including ruining everybody else).
As a summary, if you are not an american citizen, do not trust the US natsec framing. A lot of this is carryover from times when the US liberal international block (global international order), was stronger, and so as a block framing it is better iff the US block is somehow bigger, which at the time it was.
At the risk of getting too into politics...
IMO, this was maybe-true for the previous administrations, but is completely false for the current one. All people making the argument based on something like this reasoning need to update.
Previous administrations were more or less dead inertial bureaucracies. Those actually might have carried on acting in democracy-ish ways even when facing outside-context events/situations, such as suddenly having access to overwhelming ASI power. Not necessarily because were particularly “nice”, as such, but because they weren’t agenty enough to do something too out-of-character compared to their previous democracy-LARP behavior.
I still wouldn’t have bet on them acting in pro-humanity ways (I would’ve expected some more agenty/power-hungry governmental subsystem to grab the power, circumventing e. g. the inertial low-agency Presidential administration). But there was at least a reasonable story there.
The current administration seems much more agenty: much more willing to push the boundaries of what’s allowed and deliberately erode the constraints on what it can do. I think it doesn’t generalize to boring democracy-ish behavior out-of-distribution, I think it eagerly grabs and exploits the overwhelming power. It’s already chomping at the bit to do so.
I don’t think that people from the natsec version have made that update, since they have been talking this line for a while.
But the dead organization framing matters here.
In short, people think that democratic institutions are not dead (especially electoralism). If AGI is “Democratic”, that live institution, in which they are a stakeholder, will have the power to choose to do fine stuff. (and might generalize to everybody is a stakeholder) Which is + ev, especially for them.
They also expect that China as a live actor will try to kill all other actors if given the chance.