Another reply, sorry I just think what you said is super interesting. The insight you shared about Eastern spirituality affecting attitudes towards AI is beautiful. I do wonder if our own Western attitudes towards AI are due to our flawed spiritual beliefs. Particularly the idea of a wrathful, judgemental Abrahamic god. I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence that someone who was raised as an Orthodox Jew (Eliezer) came to fear AI so much.
On another note, the Old Testament is horrible (I was raised reform/californian Jewish, I guess I’m just mentioning this because I don’t want to come across as antisemitic). It imbues what should be the greatest source of beauty with our weakest, most immature impulses. The New Testament’s emphasis on mercy is a big improvement/beautiful, but even then I don’t like the Book of Revelation talking about casting the sinners into a lake of fire.
I think we do tend to underestimate differences between people.
We know theoretically that people differ a lot, but we usually don’t viscerally feel how strong those differences are. One of the most remarkable examples of that is described here:
With AI existential safety, I think our progress is so slow because people mostly pursue anthropocentric approaches. Just like with astronomy, one needs a more invariant point of view to make progress.
Another reply, sorry I just think what you said is super interesting. The insight you shared about Eastern spirituality affecting attitudes towards AI is beautiful. I do wonder if our own Western attitudes towards AI are due to our flawed spiritual beliefs. Particularly the idea of a wrathful, judgemental Abrahamic god. I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence that someone who was raised as an Orthodox Jew (Eliezer) came to fear AI so much.
On another note, the Old Testament is horrible (I was raised reform/californian Jewish, I guess I’m just mentioning this because I don’t want to come across as antisemitic). It imbues what should be the greatest source of beauty with our weakest, most immature impulses. The New Testament’s emphasis on mercy is a big improvement/beautiful, but even then I don’t like the Book of Revelation talking about casting the sinners into a lake of fire.
I think we do tend to underestimate differences between people.
We know theoretically that people differ a lot, but we usually don’t viscerally feel how strong those differences are. One of the most remarkable examples of that is described here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NyiFLzSrkfkDW4S7o/why-it-s-so-hard-to-talk-about-consciousness
With AI existential safety, I think our progress is so slow because people mostly pursue anthropocentric approaches. Just like with astronomy, one needs a more invariant point of view to make progress.
I’ve done a bit of scribblings along those lines: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WJuASYDnhZ8hs5CnD/exploring-non-anthropocentric-aspects-of-ai-existential
But that’s just a starting point, a seed of what needs to be done in order to make progress…