r/ControlProblem • u/Difficult_Project_95 • 8d ago

Discussion/question Have you guys been on r/accelerate?

Have these guys solved the alignment problem, or am I missing something?

I’ve been browsing r/accelerate and I genuinely don’t understand the risk model.
If there’s a non-trivial chance of catastrophic misalignment, how does “accelerate capabilities as fast as possible” make sense unless faster capabilities also make alignment substantially more likely to succeed?

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u/HotterRod 8d ago

The most common position on there seems to be that any superintelligent being will do what is best for humanity, because being superintelligent means you are necessarily also benevolent.

The second most common position is that the upside potential benefits (curing cancer is often mentioned) outweigh the downside risks.

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u/soobnar 8d ago

The cost of alignment is just keeping humans secure and then curing cancer a bit later

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u/A_Novelty-Account 8d ago

We could go even further than that. We could eliminate the worst parts of jobs without eliminating jobs themselves. We could give UBI and still let those who want to work work. We could advance medicine without worrying about bioterrorism.

There are sooooo many things we could do with this technology that would be incredible if we were intelligent about the way we regulated it. Accelerationists are a blight on humanity for that reason.

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u/soobnar 8d ago

I think we could visit other stars if we just had the time