OpenAI's roon argues frontier labs lack a PR problem, claiming rapid AI progress is an inherently scary reality

you dont have to believe in existential risk or job loss for this to be scary: ai is real, you can replicate human thought in machines. it is redefining what it means to be human. even if they are strictly corrigible tools that do what we ask, this can be traumatic

underrated to the degree to which every company that is great at fundraising in the last 20 years adopted explicitly millenarian frames:

ant/openai: death by unaligned ai palantir: death by terror anduril: china/taiwan spacex: death by climate -> death by woke

the frontier labs don’t have “comms problems”. reality right now has a comms problem. what is happening is a little scary and there’s no nice words anyone could say, especially not those profiting from it, that’ll make it feel that much better

we choose a low p doom. we choose a low p doom in this decade and the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win

@lmcorrigan1 @AndrewCurran_ no doubt it’s awesome and terrifying in the biblical sense. the last true adventure

can't believe i'm getting baited to give this advice for FREE. here are some counter examples:

– ai working with people not against – augment not replace – helping people learn ai – telling more stories about how ai is changing lives for better – working with communities openly – applying ai to more meaningful tasks – no one cares about benchmarks

etc. etc.

@tszzl get back to work please all the engineering youtubers i watch are mkaing better and better videos i dont care how scary it is keep on going

@tszzl Why are all the opeds from AI CEOs about job loss? But not about the actual thing that these unprofitable companies are spending millions and millions of dollars actually working on.

@tszzl I could say lots of nice words and make this all go away. But I won't

the scaling maximalism that exists inside of these firms is a much bigger theory of both history and of our lives than has been successfully payloaded into public consciousness before- and is liable to simply yield to dumber versions of the same theory- water libel, Sam evil, etc

@tszzl @AndrewCurran_ idk man, people’s diseases are literally being cured by AI doctors. Sometime it’s violent inside the storm, but beautiful outside it

@tszzl The hit pieces on Sam, Dario, and Elon are about to go exponential.

@tszzl you could say, and do, plenty of things that would make people feel better. this is just an excuse to continue to profit from it

my strong sense is these are largely charismatic gestures for both the public and the firm itself when they are simple and cohere, and many of them are sincere true beliefs, but man do they crack like a whip negatively when they are either too complex or too totalizing

it’s easy but ahistorical to believe that if you find a theory that’s big, true, and totalizing that showing it in full day light will lead to the world to adopt it. One only needs to look at first century Christianity to find out that even Absolute Truth doesn’t work this way

How can reality "have a comms problem"? How about "the reality of the situation right now is bad, in a way that's increasingly hard to keep people from realising"

@tszzl we are living in the immediate, unresolved aftermath of one of the most important discoveries of the natural world: that matrix multiplication can simulate anything and high resolution simulations of a thing are pretty much the thing

@tszzl The problems are cognitive. Like, what is true?

Frontier labs are by and large communicating what they think is true (of reality). They are often wrong about the big picture IMO. But it has to be argued out, face friction from reality, etc.

@tszzl What is the collection of posts you've seen that you think people should read that give them specific ideas surrounding positive outcomes or how one can manage through change over next 3-7 years...as we tell them to expect job loss and wealth inequality and massive volatility.