Ok, I'm a little scared to put my reputation at risk by saying this, but I think it's important and I think there's a chance I have enough of a platform that speaking up can matter. So here goes. I'm concerned that the meme of "AI risk" is being perverted to destructive ends.
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But these are very different threat scenarios from each other, and once they're "messaged" for the nontechnical public, the "AI risk" meme becomes distorted into incoherence, with a single bottom line: "technology is dangerous and needs more supervision."
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This fits very well with a cultural moment that seems to be crying for "regulate the internet, it's doing things we never expected, and we never elected these techies!"
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This creates a sort of "eat me last" dynamic. Technologists who can tell that other social agents want a piece of their "pie" (in terms of both economic resources and governance power) sometimes try to preempt attack by saying "we'll help you regulate cyberspace!"
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I'm starting to hear proposals that governments should have backdoors into any sufficiently large assemblage of computing power, on the grounds of AI safety.
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I find this worrisome on free-speech grounds, on privacy grounds, on all the traditional civil libertarian grounds that seem so "uncool" in 2019.
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I also find it worrisome that there are essentially calls for slowing down and adding more governance to a relatively freewheeling and dynamic industry (software), and making it work more like "mature" industries. Mature industries innovate less.
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And it's *especially* disturbing that I don't see any pushback, not even verbal pushback *by* technologists who are generally chatty on the internet. Not even from my friends. Not even from "heterodox" right-wingers.
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I know: you look kind of weak and not with-it if you say "actually, I think we should be free to do our thing; our thing is mostly good", when you can sense that the currents of power are trending towards illiberalism. But maybe *don't be a weenie*?
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Do you *really* want to go from being a creative intellectual to making sure you get a lock on those sweet DOD contracts? Do you really think it's *good* for positive-sum creation to be turned into zero-sum rent-seeking? If not, then maybe say so?
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People talk about all sorts of dumb and misguided stuff. There are *so* many open racists on Twitter, for instance. Surely it shouldn't be scarier to say "rent-seeking is bad" than to say the far more heinous stuff that "politically incorrect" culture warriors do?
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End of conversation
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