Chris Santos-Lang

• Chris Santos-Lang 18 Apr 2026 21:23 UTC

  −1 points

  1

  on: Only Law Can Prevent Extinction

  First: I see that your overarching point is to denounce political violence, and thank you for that.
  
  Second: A response to

  And the few who feel really personally bothered by that law [against AGI development]?

  They may be sad. They’ll definitely be angry. But they’ll survive. They wouldn’t actually survive otherwise.

  What if the effect of AGI development would be our reform instead of our extinction? What if current social injustice is a necessary consequence of human limitations which AGI could overcome (as found in https://​​dx.doi.org/​​10.2139/​​ssrn.6194078)? Then the people who should feel personally bothered by your proposed law are victims of social injustice, and your post is claiming that the mere risk of existential threat justifies perpetuating their victimhood!

  You admit that your proposed law would be useless unless enforced across the entire planet, forbidding all 8 billion of us from even exploring a potential path to social justice. Can you empathize with people who do not call living without hope of justice “surviving”? How’s about we make social justice a prerequisite to your proposed law? How’s about directing your safety efforts not at technical breakthroughs nor the enforcement of laws but at social justice? Don’t stop with denouncing violence—offer an alternative!

  In The Day the Earth Stood Still, the challenge was not to outlaw our extinction—it was to show that our species is a successful experiment worth continuing. Do that, then I would find it more rational to support your efforts to resist change...

Down with the Old or­thog­o­nal­ity the­sis, up with the New

Why We Might Freely Relin­quish Our Au­ton­omy to AI

• Chris Santos-Lang 6 Nov 2025 21:42 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Why There Is Hope For An Align­ment Solution

  I like this extension of The Alpha Omega Theorem away from the most simplistic God threat. If we extend far enough, then maybe reality counts as an Alpha Omega and the Alpha Omega hypothesis combines with Moral realism to entail that smart-enough superintelligences would follow moral laws for the same reason why they would open doors before trying to pass through: because moral laws are real and reality always defeats those who fight it.

  On the flip-side, if it so happens that the morally-better behavior would be to let humanity go extinct—if it appears that the Alpha Omega has set up a progressing system in which we are just the most recent version of the dinosaurs and it is only through our death that our worst norms (racism?) will ever fully fade away—then should we ourselves dare to defy the Alpha Omega by trying to preserve our existence?

  It cuts both ways, but @Darklight offers a nice piece of logic. It shifts my priority from trying to figure-out how to survive to trying to figure-out what the real moral laws happen to be.

Jour­nal­ism about game the­ory could ad­vance AI safety quickly

• Chris Santos-Lang 11 Jun 2025 21:35 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Shal­low re­view of tech­ni­cal AI safety, 2024

  AI threatens to orchestrate sustainable social reform would belong in the 2025 review, but may I suggest adding a new kind of agenda to your taxonomy for 2025?

  Most of your current categories focus on technology, but this article focusses on safety, on the nature of our self-destruction/​warfare, and explores what is needed technically from AI to solve it. It sees caste systems that predate AI, notes that they are dangerous (perhaps increasingly dangerous) and how to adjust AI designs and evaluation processes accordingly.

  Perhaps the title of the agenda could be “Understand safety” or “Understand ourselves”, and the increase in social impact research could reflect here.

AI threat­ens to or­ches­trate sus­tain­able so­cial reform

• Chris Santos-Lang 17 Mar 2025 19:17 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Real­ism and Rationality

  Having documented epistemic consequences of realist metaphysics (https://​​doi.org/​​10.6084/​​m9.figshare.19204896.v1), it has been pointed-out to me that even non-realists might endorse them. That should be no surprise since non-realists are in community with realists, and sharing epistemic practices (like sharing language) makes community easier. No doubt, realists would likewise endorse non-realist practices, in return, if non-realism made any such practice necessary.

  What makes this observation relevant to this article is the potential for non-realist positions to become irrelevant in practice because realist epistemic practices so deeply shape the practice of rationality. Community is an asset, so we can expect the best ASI to foster community, and for such community (including the ASI) to engage in realist epistemic practices. One might temporarily isolate into a “truth” selected to bring comfort, and one might even win political power by facilitating such comfort, but community division is unlikely to be sustainable. In other words, realism might inevitably end-up treated as true, even if false.

• Chris Santos-Lang 16 Mar 2025 15:08 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Orthog­o­nal­ity Thesis

  To get the “orthogonality” part, I think the definition of the thesis also needs to include that increasing the intelligence of the agents does not cause interpretation of (some) goals to converge.
  
  In particular, the dismissal of the concern that policy must include an absolutely perfect specification of the perfect goal does not deny that an agent could have a goal to maximize paperclip production, but rather asserts that the paperclip maximization goal may seed ASI adequately because a perfect intelligence pursuing it would behave the same as a perfect intelligence pursuing the perfect goal (although we imperfect intelligences do not realize this because we do not appreciate all the overlapping instrumental goals that both entail—for example, truly intelligent paperclip maximization may start with generating a maximally intelligent planner, and that may take so long that no actual paperclip get made).