The Pnictogen Wing

it looks like Sam Altman and OpenAI are desperate to inflate their public image as opposition to the LLM fraud ramps up. my new browser tabs have been full of puff pieces about Altman and ChatGPT—isn't great how merely launching a web browser gets you hit in the face with ads now? oh sorry I meant "legitimate technology journalism". 🙄

I have tried to talk to these people and their fans on Twitter and it's hopeless. no argument gets anywhere and I can only assume that any sentences of mine that cast doubt upon the world-shattering AGI supergenius which OpenAI et alii are about to give the world (any second now! for real this time!) read as "hater" talk to them and they tune me right out. my talk doesn't have ZERO effect, though, because sometimes afterwards these people start getting real defensive, apt to spout things like "all expertise is fake anyway" or whatnot.

And occasionally a weird note of doublethinkful humility creeps into the techbros' talk. It's like, "Yeah I know I'm really an idiot who's faking it but isn't everyone?" It's like in their heart of hearts they have decided that humanity really has shot its bolt and is now retrogressing, so the only possible hope to solving multiple insoluble problems is the Machine God. They at least feel like they've got an edge on the folks (like Mono and me) who are totally out of the loop and critiquing this stuff from an outsider's perspective. Mono's erudition at least seems to faze them a bit, but surely they must feel like he's a goofy old relic to still be trusting in books and higher education. Isn't all that stuff going away?

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. What's the least expensive way to get into this LLM crap? Can one host one that's wholly self contained?

~Chara

I have been increasingly haunted by the following paradox: the AI techbros, the infuriating cis whıte guys (it IS all cis whıte guys, isn't it, at the top of this field?) who basically demand that the world hand over all its money and resources to build superintelligent computers who will solve every conceivable problem so long as you believe in them hard enough, are clearly motivated by a pile of extremely bad reasons, and yet...they're perplexingly sincere. Yes, they're clearly salivating over the huge stacks of money at stake. Yes, they're wanting to push all their responsibilities and ethics onto computers so they can hoard money with a clear conscience. Yes, they're keen to build machines that regurgitate all their favorite fallacies and bıgotries back at them—like they're trying to build the magic mirror from Snow White, training it up to tell them just what they want to hear from it. One can easily discern other nasty reasons for why Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen and all the rest of these nasty people are ginning up their AI craze.

But I sense another quality in these awful people: sincerity. Maybe I'm totally wrong; maybe they really are purely cynical. But cynicism can coexist with sincerity in the human soul. "Roko's Basilisk"—the premise that the inevitable superintelligent AI will eternally torture anyone who doesn't believe in it hard enough, or something—seems utterly without merit, mere bad-faith Pascal's-wager crap meant to scare people, except...I think that the techbros who believe in it are actually scared. The Basilisk does have power—over themselves. Some Internet jester like me can taunt them with their own contradictions: if they're scared that AI wants to kill us all, then why are the AI tech execs trying to give their machines as much power as possible, pushing them into every industry, including military applications? If they're afraid of Skynet then why are they building Skynet? I suspect that the simplest answer one really is, they believe they're under a compulsion. They do not know how to break away from it, and thus the "Roko's Basilisk" nonsense is really an indirect attempt to warn the rest of the world: "We're too weak NOT to build killer machines."

I think I know exactly where the weakness comes from, too—the actual power in the paralyzing glance of Roko's Basilisk isn't AI, but the overwhelming culture of detachment and learned helplessness that's encouraged in capitalism.

Imagine having an ego boost, but seeing it not as a personal victory, nor as a victory for some in-group, but as a victory for all of humanity or even all beings, but over something tiny and personal like opening this jar of pickles was is a victory for the universe

I can't remember where I saw it (it might have been from some C. S. Lewis piece) but I once saw a description of what humility was like: feeling just as happy about someone else's achievement as if you'd done it yourself. the complete absence, you might say, of envy or jealous or secret grumbling about how you wish you'd gotten there first.

and I think that another aspect of humility is that the tiny achievements are worth every bit as much as the massive ones. yes, it's amazing that you got the pickle-jar open. it's not always easy to get the pickle-jar open.

~Chara