[postultimate]

This is a decent exploration of the third-worst possible outcome of AI, but it's a bizarre dismissal of the second-worst, even though he explains the mechanism himself:

> The doomsday scenario is not a manufacturing A.I. transforming the entire planet into paper clips, as one famous thought experiment has imagined. It’s A.I.-supercharged corporations destroying the environment and the working class in their pursuit of shareholder value.

Well, yes. If the AI is better than human it will be put in charge of corporations, and will be given the goal of maximizing shareholder value. Since those shareholders can be corporations, there's no reason why this has to involve human preference at any point. As a single-minded optimizer indifferent to humans, it would need to be successfully restrained in order to be merely oppressive - by default, it's a Paperclipper.

[mitthrowaway2]

These articles tend to write "the doomsday scenario is not X, it's Y", without any supporting reasoning why it's not X.

What they really mean is "Y is a possible bad outcome", but it wouldn't sound impactful to say that.

[piloto_ciego]

It’s because we can’t envision anything other than capitalism… any of us.

Capitalist realism is a big deal. In retrospect the old world order will seem crazy but while it is here, now, seeing on the other side seems insane.

The AI has been running in our heads since Adam Smith. Capitalism is the “evil AI paper clip maximizer” - it exists only to find supply and demand equilibrium, nothing more.

We ignore that at our own peril.

[NumberWangMan]

My thought is, capitalism may be an AI, but it's not too capable on the whole. Even though it screws up a lot, there's room under capitalism for people to sometimes do stuff that isn't all about profit. And of course, sometimes profit and human value are aligned -- that's what capitalism is intended to do, even if the alignment isn't even close to perfect.

My worry is that with AI, things will move so fast, they will be so smart, and will end up being used so widely, that there will be no room left for anything else we value. People and organizations that turn more power over to the machines will run rings around the ones that are more cautious. The end is AI everywhere, used for everything, and humans disempowered (or gone).