Positive users praise framings and insights into how backgrounds shape views on post-AGI governance and AI safety proposals, while negative users call some ideas naive or accuse others of political bias and limited historical understanding.
Based on 9 visible X reactions from 16 accounts; directional sample.
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@ramez Humans are animals. We thrive on adaptation to evade bottlenecks. This is a bottleneck. All it takes is one post-literate innovation releasing our symbolic imprisonment in AI and this tech will be worthless. Think big, this is small-minded.
@ramez I think it’s a very naive document. Especially its treatment of US-China relations and the incentives the operate under, and its assumption of state capacity in both countries.
@sebkrier @alexolegimas It's a good insight, Alex. I grew up in the states, but child of someone who grew up in an authoritarian regime.
@AndrewCritchPhD Nice, I like this framing
Researchers argue personal background drives opposition to state-backed safety proposals
@ramez makes sense trust shapes tech takes
@ramez Very well said.
I'm firmly in the third camp. The basic problem with AI 2040 is that it uses a fictional and speculative doomsday scenario to justify very real surveillance and control capabilities that governments would be certain to use in authoritarian ways, well beyond AI safety. It warns against concentration of AI power but its policy proposals serve to increase the power of the most powerful entities on planet Earth. It concretely sacrifices freedom in ways guaranteed to cause harm, in an effort to forestall a made up threat. It proposes safety tools that give governments unprecedented capabilities to monitor, suppress, and manipulate. These tools are intended only to stop the development of overly powerful AI, but once they exist, governments will use them as they please. Its authors mean well, but are so convinced of a fictional and unproven threat that they'd do real harm to the world to prevent it. It would create a world that is less free and less safe in the name of safety for a threat that may not even exist. I can't imagine making this trade off.
You can probably map peoples reactions to various post AGI proposals based on whether they grew up in or adjacent to centralized/authoritarian forms of government and the economy. This is what it means to debate over normative values, and is good + healthy imo https://twitter.com/sebkrier/status/2075581960294940939
@sebkrier There's also • rogue AI-powered individuals, and • rogue AI-powered centerless social trends. Relatedly, omnicide specifically can arise from ~5 scales of organization described here, rogue AI being #5: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.09369 https://x.com/AndrewCritchPhD/status/2075597637479272840/photo/1
Alex's is right. If you fear authoritarian government, you'll have strong reactions to a category of AI safety proposals that make governments more powerful and capable of authoritarian acts. That's just one category, though. There are other AI safety proposals that don't empower authoritarians.
The reactions to prescriptions about AGI have less to do with being 'AGI pilled' or not, and more about whether you're more concerned with AIs taking over (xrisk), companies taking over (anti-capitalism), or the abuse of power by empowered governments (anti-authoritarianism).
@So8res It matters of course, but so do one's assumptions about technology, economics, and political science - all of which matter for how you understand AGI.
Positive users praise framings and insights into how backgrounds shape views on post-AGI governance and AI safety proposals, while negative users call some ideas naive or accuse others of political bias and limited historical understanding.
Based on 9 visible X reactions from 16 accounts; directional sample.
Ask a question below.
Published answers will appear here.
@ramez Very well said.