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by slg 62 days ago
>If humanity goes extinct in the next few years because of unaligned superintelligence

This is either a misunderstanding of the anti-AI crowd or an intentional attempt to discredit them. The majority of anti-AI people don't actually fear this because that belief would require that this person has already bought into the hype regarding the actual power and prowess of AI. The bigger motivator for anti-AI folks is usually just the way it amplifies the negative traits of humans and the systems we have created which is already happening and doesn't need any type of pending "superintelligence" breakthrough. For example, an AI doesn't actually need to be able to perfectly replace the work I do for someone to decide that it's more cost-effective to fire me and give my work to that AI.

3 comments

There are many different groups of anti-AI people with different beliefs.

This attempt to "reframe and reclaim" (here, paraphrased: "significant existential risks from AI is actually marketing hype by pro-AI fanatics") is a rhetorical device, but not an honest one. It's a power struggle over who gets to define and lead "the" anti-AI movement.

We may agree or disagree with them but there are rational anti-AI arguments that center on X-risks.

>There are many different groups of anti-AI people with different beliefs.

See my other comment. I qualified what I said while the comment I replied to didn't, so it's weird that this is a response to me and not the prior comment.

>here, paraphrased: "significant existential risks from AI is actually marketing hype by pro-AI fanatics"

If we're talking "dishonest rhetoric", this is a dishonest framing of what I said. I'm not saying this is inherently intentional marketing hype. I'm saying there is a correlation between someone who thinks AI is that powerful and someone who thinks AI will benefit humanity. The anti-AI crowd is less likely to be a believer in AI's unique power and will simply look at it as a tool wielded by humans which means critiques of it will simply mirror critiques of humanity.

This particularly anti-AI article is not from a pdoomer.
> an AI doesn't actually need to be able to perfectly replace the work I do for someone to decide that it's more cost-effective to fire me and give my work to that AI.

Exactly, "lack of intelligence" is really a much bigger concern than "superintelligence". Companies and government will happily try to save money and avoid accountability by letting AI do work that it can only do poorly and it will be humans who are left with the accelerated AI powered enshittification and blind/soulless paperclip maximization that results.

It is not a misunderstanding; the anti-AI crowd is heterogeneous.
Which is why I said "The majority of anti-AI people...". It was the comment I was responding to that was treating the anti-AI crowd as homogeneous by ascribing to them all a rather fantastical belief of a minority of that group.