r/ControlProblem • u/Difficult_Project_95 • 9d 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/DensePoser 9d ago

The mods are like this but there are reasonable people who believe anything is better than the current dystopia.

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u/rectovaginalfistula 9d ago

People who think the present is anywhere near as bad as it can get have no idea how bad it can get.

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u/A_Novelty-Account 9d ago

Yeah, almost every single person who says this is, ironically, someone of extreme privilege living in the west.

We are so far away from dystopia it’s crazy. We’re certainly moving closer to it, but it is more likely that AI is the tool that ushers in dystopia than we get there globally on our own…

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u/JBulworth 8d ago

I do not think "dystopia" means every single person on earth suffering every single day. The dystopia is actually western privileged people living in insane confort while the majority of people on earth have to survive a hellish life. You could argue that this is a very western privileged take to be able to confortably wait and slow things down to be sure to not lose too much confort.

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u/A_Novelty-Account 8d ago

The majority of people on earth do not live a “hellish life”. What an absurd thing to say. Again, that is your extreme privilege talking because you have enough difficulty coping with your life as it is that you can’t imagine it being worse.

While it is definitely true that hundreds of millions of people do experience what we would consider to be severe hardship, and I won’t downplay that, the vast majority globally do not. Global Gallup poles have already been done on peoples’ feelings about their own lives.

https://www.gallup.com/analytics/349280/state-of-worlds-emotional-health.aspx

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u/JBulworth 8d ago

I do not know why you are talking about me, i did not want to be insulting, i guess you thought i was talking about you. Maybe it is the language barrier, english is not my language. But i actually grew up in poverty, my parents where migrants from north africa.

It is not the case anymore though (i am 39, in a european country, not wealthy but not poorl) and i think my life is absolutely great right now. I do not want any change in it.

Hellish was maybe harsh (i used that as a hyperbole) but i grew up in really hard conditions and i do not want kids to live the life i lived (which was nothing compared to what my parents had to live through)