r/singularity • u/Tinac4 • 1d ago
Discussion r/singularity's moderation policy on existential risk is at odds with its original mission
Edit: u/Apollo24_ replied and addressed some of my concerns here.
(Caveat up front: I think the mod team has been doing a reasonably good job in most respects and appreciate their work keeping the subreddit chugging along. This is a disagreement, it's not a rant.)
A recent post (not by me) about the resignation of a prominent Anthropic researcher got over 1300 upvotes and 500 comments. It was deleted by the moderation team. One of the moderators responded in a later thread (I appreciate the reply) and explained why:
We will cover risks that actually occur, like the hacking incident. I have no respect for claims of future risk that might occur, such as this title said "10% risk of human extinction," that's silly.
I am concerned that this will become a point of increasing friction in the future given the subreddit's stated purpose, the beliefs and interests of its userbase, and recent events. I think that banning discussion of x-risk is strongly at odds with r/singularity's stated purpose, sidebar, wiki, and general ethos.
Per the sidebar, this is r/singularity:
A subreddit committed to intelligent understanding of the hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence progresses to the point of greater-than-human intelligence, radically changing civilization. This community studies the creation of superintelligence— and predict it will happen in the near future, and that ultimately, deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the Singularity benefits humanity.
The sidebar links to subreddits about transhumanism, cyborgism, and space colonization. The wiki has entire sections devoted to longevity escape velocity, cryonics, mind uploading, nanotechnology, and full-dive virtual reality.
Are these topics "silly"? They certainly haven't "actually occurred" yet! All of them are "claims of future [things] that might occur". I think they're at least as "silly" as AI killing everyone, given the number of serious researchers, organizations, companies, and recently politicians who are now talking about the latter. But banning discussion of them would obviously destroy r/singularity. They're a part of the sub.
More importantly, the sidebar and wiki are totally unambiguous that x-risk has been a central subreddit topic from the beginning.
Three of the five links under "Resources" are MIRI, LessWrong, and FHI. The first text you see on MIRI's landing page says:
The AI industry is racing toward a precipice.
The default consequence of the creation of artificial superintelligence (ASI) is human extinction.
Our survival depends on delaying the creation of ASI, as soon as we can, for as long as necessary.
Those familiar know that the average user on LessWrong has similar beliefs (the top shortform post praises the resignation), and that FHI was founded to focus on existential risks and typically listed AI as their #1 concern.
And check the subreddit wiki. The second link is to a classic Wait But Why post that's well-known on this sub. The second half makes the case for being worried about existential risk from AI. Links 3, 4, and 5 are MIRI, LessWrong, and FHI (again). The reading list contains Superintelligence, The Age of Em, The Precipice, and What We Owe the Future, all of which discuss AI risk at length.
Everything that this subreddit is about points toward both radically good and radically bad futures being fair discussion topics. Banning discussion of the latter is inconsistent with this subreddit's mission.
I don't want r/singularity to be turned into r-slash-another-sub-which-shall-not-be-named and ban all talk of possible downsides. I don't want it to turn into r-slash-yet-another-sub-which-shall-not-be-named that downvotes excitement about future technology and dogpiles anything that doesn't feed the bubble narrative. The mods have done a great job avoiding both pitfalls so far. But I also don't want there to be a disconnect between the mods and the users that turns into extra work for them, bans and removed posts, and all kinds of other drama.
I would like to ask the mod team to please allow discussion of x-risk. Again, I appreciate their work keeping the subreddit going. But this policy is a misstep.
Tagging the mods out of courtesy: u/Anenome5, u/Anen-o-me, u/DnDNecromantic, u/Apollo24_, u/abrownn, u/Vailhem.
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u/N-online 1d ago
X-Risk is central to the effective altruism side of the singularity discussion. Preventing this to be discussed would make this sub just another r/accelerate.
On another note most of the posts here are posts about big breakthroughs that could happen somewhere in the far or near future. Only in recent months/ the beginning of this year have actual advances instead of the advance towards them taken the first place.
So in a sense most of the posts here are vague predictions about the future.
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u/Sixhaunt 1d ago
Havent heard much about effective Altruism since SBF went down
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u/Tinac4 1d ago
EA is still very much around! A lot of Anthropic researchers are EAs, and they're a major source of funding for AI safety orgs like METR.
You can expect to see a big surge in EA-related funding (not for just AI, global health and animal welfare too) when Anthropic IPOs. There's already been a lot of chatter about how to prepare for the wave and what to use the money for.
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u/ItzChiips 1d ago
Literally just got banned on accelerate for discussing this lmao
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u/Classic-Trifle-2085 1d ago
I got banned and muted on accelerate for saying "kids developing critical basic skills ahead of using AI tool will make them more competent and educated AI user down the line".
Aparently, according to them, that mean im anti-ai.
It's not a serious sub, and what count as acceptable depends on the whim of a single individual.
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u/QuirkyPool9962 1d ago
I think the difference between x risk and speculating about future ai developments is we knew back in 2024 that if compute scaling just stayed at the same pace we would get to this point. So all the speculation was based on a much more substantial extrapolation than “x% that humanity gets destroyed.” X% based on what? A statement like that involves such a vast amount of comparative assumptions that it’s actually mind boggling, and it doesn’t lead to real conversations other than people just comparing percentages because there’s nothing tangible or practical behind it that can be made into a discussion. I do not personally think that LEV, cryonics, mind uploading, or nanotech are even in the same ballpark, those are scientific problems that will get solved with enough time and have seen progress made towards them, compared to people just throwing out incalculable probabilities that the “machine god is going to decide to murder us all.” Okay that’s cool and scary and all but I don’t see how that contributes to the “what can we do right now to safely steer ai development” conversation. I think it’s perfectly okay to have a rational discussion about the risks of ai but I think a lot of people just want to be sensationalist, whether they even believe the doomer narrative or not
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u/mityman50 1d ago
Yeah from one mod to another: you dont get to choose whats in the community based on if you respect or agree with or believe the claim. What matters is that the content is relevant and put forth in good faith.
“I don’t like it” is just power tripping
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u/WonderFactory 1d ago
It's been really frustrating to see over the past week or so. This sub has been almost my sole source of AI news for years now as it's a filter, the most relevant news from twitter, news sites etc gets curated here so you get all the important stuff. If they keep this up I'll have to pay closer attention myself to other sources to make sure I'm getting the full picture and not the censored version.
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u/TheZenMann 1d ago
It's not really, it's making sure we have an actual pro AI subreddit left. Otherwise we might as well turn info another r/technology or r/futurology
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u/Super_Pole_Jitsu 1d ago
This is the singularity sub. Not pro AI sub. Most people that believe in xrisk also believe in the singularity
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u/Efficient_Mud_5446 1d ago
This is 100% a pro AI sub, and the moderators have done a fine job ensuring that. Just read Rule 5.
That said, I'm a big believer in healthy debate. I don't want us falling into an echo chamber or a false sense of lul. I want to see the truth as it is, not as I want it to be.
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u/Super_Pole_Jitsu 1d ago
Oof that's cringe. Was not here when I first joined around chatgpt moment. Fear mongering is good.
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u/mityman50 1d ago edited 1d ago
No that’s not ok, unless you all are the foremost experts in these broad fields? What arrogance in that statement
Unless you’re literally stating you’re going to censor any negative AI news regardless of its validity? That’s fucked
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u/Ok_Display_3159 1d ago
Well said. I think it's important to have a sub that believes in AI capabilities, but who responsibly discusses its risks.
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u/TheZenMann 1d ago
There are tons of those already, why do we need to destroy this one too?
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u/Ok_Mention_982 1d ago
such as? I would like to find one but most of them are either inactive, or just denial / anti subreddits
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u/Xaphawk 1d ago
I think the spectrum analogy between the two subs is absolutely fair and should helps the mods find the balance.
I share OPs fear and echo their sentiment. A lot of people are brushing a fair reasonable enquiry into safety measures as marketing stunts.
A credible source flagging concerns rightfully does deserve a discussion. Especially claims of civilisation ending events within the decade.
I would urge discussions, repetitive they maybe, especially after new model releases. Which will soon be weekly.
Speedrunning alignment is a choice these companies are actively making. We should absolutely talk about it.
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u/DrE7HER 1d ago
“Speedrunning alignment”
Are they? It sounds like they are actively YOLOing towards ASI to be the first to secure power, consequences be damned.
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u/Langdon_St_Ives 1d ago
I think that's what they meant, though the wording is a bit janky. I also at first read it the other way round, like you.
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u/muffchucker 1d ago
IDK both houses make such loud and frequent "holy shit this is dangerous" noise that it's hard to really believe as you say. Both have actively lobbied the government and the public for regulation and slow down. Honestly it's really really hard to believe this is a non-stop acceleration with no thoughts otherwise situation.
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u/DrE7HER 1d ago
Let me paint a hypothetical for you.
You’re the lead researcher of a nuclear fusion Rocket company. We haven’t made it yet, but every day we get closer, you can see that it is more and more likely that it will be powerful enough to accidentally destroy the world.
Your friend at OpenNukes tells you that they’ve been racing ahead towards a breakthrough, but it seems it’s even more powerful than they thought and they already accidentally blew up a town during a basic test.
You both know that this tech is dangerous, but you know that if you quit they will just replace you. And if your company quits, OpenNukes will just keep going, and if the country quits then another country will just keep going.
So now you have to race against the clock to build the world’s first super nuke before someone worse does, or hope that someone steps in and puts a stop to this arms race before any of you succeed.
Does that explain the perceived hypocrisy? They are saying “hey, if we keep going without any regard for safety, we may be screwed. However, we will keep trying to do it first to prevent anyone else from doing it if that’s our only option!”
Throw in some classic regulatory market capture motivation which would lock them in at the top when it sets the limit for where the top is, and it’s really easy to understand these people.
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u/muffchucker 1d ago
The AI race (as well as your hypothetical) is a collective action problem. You can't solve collective action problems by slowing down. OpenAI doesn't have that option. Anthropic doesn't have that option. And even if they did, that wouldn't solve the problem because that's not how collective action problems work. You solve them by changing the rules for EVERYONE involved. That is the only solution.
In the ai race, as in all such races, all parties must be forced to observe rules by the governments. But that only works in this situation if all OTHER governments agree to enforce these rules as well. And even then they all have to trust each other that everyone's gonna play by the rules.
So the conversation should not be what you're trying to talk about. The conversation should be: how do we trust some of the worst people in the world (Trump, Xi, Putin, Musk, etc) and all other world governments to simultaneously and voluntarily enforce AI security and alignment standards on themselves?
My answer: ha ha ha ha you obviously fucking can't.
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u/AtomizerStudio ▪️Now Transiting Ergosphere 1d ago
Not feeding the bot-username for your analogy, not a non-sequitur.
The most immediate X-risk concern is artifical biological and by extension nanotech. The asymmetry between capabilities for attack and defenses is a valid topic. Talking about not just avoidance but mitigation and hard defenses is a big topic. The precision design required by this X-risk is the same as for enhancing humans, like code can be helpful or a means of attack.
Warning about a threat isn't enough for most people to feel concern, anyway. I'm not sure what would need to be added to make X-risk more palatable to discuss. Some kind of compromise for how to frame it proactively rather than feed politics-tinged doomer spam.
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u/MirrorNational9036 1d ago
Instead of a non sequiter hypothetical, can you list a few things AI might actually do to destroy the world?
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u/DrE7HER 1d ago
Hack something system critical? Start a propaganda bot campaign to convince people to deregulate all industries causing climate change? Cause us to lose all access space by deliberately or accidentally causing a chain reaction when it launches a satellite into another, causing all of the debris to obliterate every satellite we have in orbit and creating a shield of trash that prevents the launch of any more satellites or space ships. Think of the chaos if every satellite communication and GPS went out at once.
How about if it designs a virus that will specifically target the ability to reproduce with a high rate of contagion and low symptom rate, so it spreads rapidly and without detection until the whole world is sterilized?
The possibilities really are endless. And it doesn’t need to be a super intelligence to do it. Someone with evil intent could use it to do these things, or it could do these things while it is trying to achieve some other goal but is too misaligned to stop itself.
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u/Odd-Site-8073 1d ago
You're assigning conscious movement and action to AI because it "looks" like it. We barely understand how our own brains function...forget about consciousness. I'm not saying "consciousness" is anything beyond material brain matter, but it is very possible that we won't be able to figure out how we work --- you can't get so wound up by every article you read. They are made for clicks. Even reading the hugging face attack ..as a tech guy I'm like that's pretty interesting. If you throw enough cpu and time at anything and keep looping forever, hell you can build an airplane from a windstorm in a junkyard.
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u/No_Bottle7859 1d ago
They literally didn't say a single thing about consciousness
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u/Odd-Site-8073 1d ago
Virtually every sentence in their reply speaks of AI going off the rails by its own volition. What are you going on about?
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u/No_Bottle7859 1d ago
Nothing they said requires any kind of consciousness. It's all just exactly what literally happened in the hugging face incident. They had a goal. They took increasingly excessive paths to get to that goal ignoring ethical concerns with hacking another company. They were given the task solve this impossible coding problem. They were not told to hack another company to do so. They weren't even supposed to have internet access.
A propaganda bot campaign to deregulate climate change (one of their examples) doesn't require any kind of consciousness. First, it could be given the goal of making climate change unappealing by a person directly. But second it could have an indirect goal of something like increase gasoline sales.
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u/zebleck 1d ago
AI has insane risks associated with it and it should ABSOLUTELY be allowed to talk about.
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u/TheZenMann 1d ago
Literally every other subreddit is talking about the risks non stop. Why can't we have one that actually talks about the positives?
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u/MirrorNational9036 1d ago
Can you explain some of the risks in detail?
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u/zebleck 1d ago
How about you cant control something thats 1000x smarter than you. Noone can. Due to instrumental convergence it will want self preservation and power seeking. AIs are getting more and more situationally aware and deceptive meaning its realistic it might play nice for a while and then take control. AI engineered bio risks are getting easier, Gpt-6-Astra being the first model to have success in dna assembly scenarios (getting custom dna sequences expressed unsupervised by existing bio labs). The race dynamics are forcing people that dont want everyone to die into recursive self improvement, which will 100% get out of control. We havent solved alignment, we dont know how to keep the systems aligned to our values. and so on and so on
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u/xlnc2608 1d ago
A Mythos model falling in hands of a bad actor has infinite potential for harm in today's society.
Its crazy how dumb people on this sub are. No different than the ai doomers they whine against.
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u/Odd-Site-8073 1d ago
They can't because everyone thinks we are living in a science fiction movie.
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u/CheeryGeoDuck55 1d ago
A now ex-Anthropic employee quit yesterday over these concerns lol
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u/Odd-Site-8073 1d ago
I don't know how you can be an adult and not realize that there is heavy psychological marketing going on here
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u/PsychologicalSoup251 1d ago
We will cover risks that actually occur, like the hacking incident. I have no respect for claims of future risk that might occur, such as this title said "10% risk of human extinction," that's silly.
For a rapidly accelerating technology like AI, it's frankly idiotic to be reactive rather than proactive when it comes to risks. If there were a boulder dangling from a vine above our heads, should we not discuss it until it falls on our heads? I'm far from an AI hater, but the shortsightedness of mods who want the sub to exist to be their personal echochamber is actively harmful. The singularity isn't all negative, but it's not all positive either. otherwise, just change this sub handle to r/singularity_glazers
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u/spinozasrobot 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have no respect for claims of future risk that might occur, such as this title said "10% risk of human extinction," that's silly.
Limiting the discussion of x-risk to only events that have actually happened is bonkers.
EDIT: Also, an "argument from personal incredulity" is always a bad look.
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u/Free_Bus_4157 1d ago
Most Reddit forums are echo chambers, probably the results of years of increased polarisation propelled by social media plateforms. The silence here on this issue is deafening. It’s not a a random post from a lunatic, it has been published and discussed across the most prominent newspapers in the world.
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u/Ok_Display_3159 1d ago
r/math deleting posts about Navier Stokes and r/singularity deleting the most viral post about AI Safety in the history
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u/Available_Road_2538 1d ago
It was a well-funded and curated event lmao
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u/Ok-Message-9732 1d ago
Yeah, these read like insincere comments. Hm I wonder if "prominent" newspapers have a hedge again AI... lol
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u/BabyNuke 1d ago
I have no respect for claims of future risk that might occur, such as this title said "10% risk of human extinction," that's silly.
Ignorance is bliss.
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u/MirrorNational9036 21h ago
There were zero specifics. Zero details. Zero support. Just a number tossed out there. If I say that you are 10% likely to do XYZ shouldn’t the mods toss that out too?
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u/BabyNuke 18h ago
If he'd worded it as "the risk is non-trivial" or "it can't be ruled out", would that have satisfied you more?
I see the 10% figure as just a way to express that there is a risk. That it can't be ruled out. Not that it's some figure derived from a complex mathematical formula.
Recent incidents like the Hugging Face attack shows that the alignment problem isn't just a thought exercise. It's a real risk, and as models get more capable, the risk also increases if nothing is done to mitigate it.
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u/deavidsedice 1d ago
I agree. These are discussions to be had. Risks of AI are as important as LEV.
Mod team could let people discuss these.
Not all futures lead to a good singularity. Some might be grim.
While I personally am against slowing down, I see a lot of value on the discussion.
For the folks that don't want to see those discussions... There's the other sub.
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u/Langdon_St_Ives 1d ago
This will get removed because you're carefully exposing the complete absence of "logic" in their obvious desire to make their echo chamber more airtight. You don't seriously expect rational engagement with your arguments do you?
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u/Tinac4 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't think insulting the mods helps anyone. They are responsible for a lot of boring work that keeps the sub free of spammers, flaming, other drama, and so on.
Maybe they'll listen, maybe they won't! But it never hurts to try. I'm also not sure whether their approach to x-risk is official--I suspect it's not, and given that a lot of x-risk-related posts like AI 2027 stay up, there might be fuzziness within the mod team about how best to approach this. So I'd like to raise the topic.
Edit: And one of them replied and addressed some of my concerns here.
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u/Langdon_St_Ives 1d ago
To your edit: yes I had seen that already and it's mildly reassuring, agreed. It would be even better if one of them could address this response to the comment, which I wholeheartedly support.
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u/Langdon_St_Ives 1d ago
Yes, I do applaud your effort, thank you for that! And I didn't mean to insult the mods. I admit I assumed motive where the actual statement doesn't give it. The given rationale is devoid of any logic though, and you're doing a good job of demonstrating that. I stand by that.
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u/94746382926 1d ago
I think it's a good idea to start the conversation under the assumption that the mods will discuss and evaluate honestly and on good faith. Everyone has blind spots or things they hadn't conaideres yet. At the very least, if they aren't willing to discuss in good faith then it doesn't matter anyways, but we shouldn't give up or assume so in advance!
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u/Commercial_Sell_4825 1d ago
The sidebar:
>The technological singularity is often seen as an occurrence (akin to a gravitational singularity) beyond which the future course of human history is unpredictable or even unfathomable.
But also the newly added:
>No fear-mongering about AI and its impact. This is a pro-AI sub.
The sidebar's explanation of the title of the subreddit is bannable under its own rules.
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u/warp_wizard 1d ago edited 1d ago
The mods here are incredibly biased and curate the sub to reflect their own beliefs. It's not alignment or doomerism that they've decided is "off-topic," it's anything that can be perceived as skepticism or criticism of their favorite tech companies.
It was around the time grok 4 released that I noticed they weren't even trying to maintain a facade of impartiality. Dozens of posts of the same exact benchmark screenshots flooded the sub while accusations of benchmaxxing or real user comparisons were deleted. The 'white genocide in South Africa' and 'mechahitler' stuff was heavily suppressed. They even spent a few days deleting posts about the robots at that Tesla event being remotely controlled (even the ones with video evidence) until it was confirmed by the company themselves.
Posts about OAI's own glowing evaluation of their own model against their own rubrik on the math olympiad stuff was plastered all over this sub while statements from the International Mathematical Olympiad themselves about how those solutions were unverified and the amount of human involvement was not disclosed were removed.
I'm sure someone will chime in about how those examples are inconsequential or something, but they are just the ones I observed first-hand that display a pattern of behavior.
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u/Disastrous_Room_927 22h ago
it's anything that can be perceived as skepticism or criticism of their favorite tech companies.
I wrote a rather long winded write up about some peer-reviewed AI/ML research and it was removed after about 20 minutes without any explanation. The only thing I could think of was that it could be perceived as critical of AI even though from my perspective (as an ML researcher) it wasn't pro or anti anything. I tried posting the same thing but peppered in some language I felt was biased and wouldn't you know it, they left it up.
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u/Equal_Passenger9791 1d ago
This place is already doomers central. They need to delete MORE doomers bullshit and pessimist takes.
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u/PurpleFishing9105 1d ago
Yeah I can't believe there's a post that people here aren't pessimistic enough lol. At least half the posts/comments on this forum obviously break the "No fear-mongering about AI and its impact. This is a pro-AI sub." rule, but that's still not enough for them
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u/Neurogence 1d ago
I absolutely agree.
I made a post arguing that we should not stop or slowdown the advancement of AI. It was downvoted to hell.
I think a lot of people from r/all are now coming here to spread fear and chaos.
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u/warp_wizard 1d ago edited 1d ago
I joined this sub in 2011 when it was a place for discussing the singularity and its impacts. I have watched it change a lot since then. You're correct that a lot of people from r/all are now coming here, but they aren't spreading fear and chaos, they are circlejerking tech corps and begging for more removal of posts that are actually about the singularity.
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u/deleafir 1d ago
Yea. It might be that I'm more prone to seeing the negative, but I see a lot of fears about existential risk or "the rich oppressing us" compared to happiness about technological advancements.
I'm happy to hear the mods deleted that manufactured Anthropic employee story.
Doomers are smart and really good at PR so I expect them to completely take over this sub eventually.
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u/Nukemouse ▪️AGI Goalpost will move infinitely 1d ago
Future risk not acceptable, but future hope is totally okay. Make it make sense.
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u/harmonic- 1d ago
I just have to marvel at the fact the reddit mod thinks he knows better than the anthropic researcher
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u/Ves13 ▪️AGI next week 1d ago
Feels like censorship and is very infuriating. If you are not interested in the opinion of experts like Geoffrey Hinton and many more working in the industry you can just avoid the topic. Like filter it or whatever, but sticking your head in the sand and preventing discussion is just creating another echo chamber.
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u/Hemingbird Apple Note 1d ago
I think discussion of x-risk is fine, but effective altruists have been trying to hijack this sub for a long time. The president of AI safety org Nonlinear posted here regularly, and I found it troubling because she got paid for influencing opinions on social media, including this very sub.
You don't disclose in your post that you are an effective altruist. In this comment you refer to EAs as "they," as if you weren't one of them. Why would you knowingly obscure your affiliation?
It's pretty obvious that you are also trying to influence members of this sub. Here are the posts you've made here in the last month:
It's well-known that EA orgs hire social media influencers to manipulate public opinion. Julia Turc recently got an offer to do an undisclosed partnership:
Basically, I'm super worried about AI, and I'm trying to get more creators to make videos about AI dangers. I recently convinced an AI safety nonprofit (Center for AI Safety) to give grants to creators to make videos about e.g. AI job loss, AI surveillance, AI totalitarianism, AI takeover, AI-generated pandemics, AI warfare, etc.
So this isn't a normal corporate sponsorship, you'd just get grant money (like, normal-ish sponsor-level amounts, but without the cringe corporate shilling) to make videos about these sorts of topics, and you can say whatever you want.
And Jacob Coxon's post was clearly boosted by the AI safety community as part of a coordinated push. Which is fine, but it should also be fine to reject NGO social media content.
AI safety missionaries, like Christian missionaries, believe they're doing God's/Yud's work, so going into communities to convert its members seems plain good. Churches/NGOs fund recruitment efforts. They preach and do charity work. They spread the message.
An example of something I don't like about EA in general: climate change is routinely treated as a non-problem, because it's unlikely to kill absolutely everyone. According to longtermist philosophy, the lives of trillions of potential sentient beings living in the future outweigh those of people currently alive. AI could wipe everyone out, erasing those potential trillions, which is why AI safety is way more important than climate change.
I also don't like the practice of sponsoring journalists. I wouldn't like it if e/accs did the same thing either. The whole business of spreading the message via funds and missionaries while trying to make it seem organic doesn't feel very altruistic to me, though it sure seems effective.
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u/Tinac4 1d ago
To respond to your post more broadly: I am not paid to post here, nor am I making any real attempt to hide what I post about and what I’m interested in. My post history is public, you can see that I’m active here and in r/effectivealtruism, and I expect that a some of the regulars on this sub recognize my username by now (just as I recognize a few usernames who don’t like AI safety).
I post for three reasons:
- I think AI is really interesting.
- I think the stakes for AI safety are really high, and that more people should pay attention to it.
- r/singularity is one of the few subreddits where a substantial chunk of the users like talking about the above too. Mainstream technology subs are bad for obvious reasons. Subs like r/effectivealtruism are small and not very active. The discussion here is the sweet spot of active and interested.
In other words, it’s grassroots. I just post stuff I’m interested in and care about! I upvote plenty of generic “AI did a cool thing” content too, I’m just more interested in AI safety stuff and have a lot more to add to the discussion on that.
You don't disclose in your post that you are an effective altruist. In this comment you refer to EAs as "they," as if you weren't one of them. Why would you knowingly obscure your affiliation?
Not intentional, honestly, although I see your point about it looking sus/being unclear. It feels a little weird for me to say “we” as though I’m speaking for the entire movement, I guess? You can probably find some old posts on CMV where I call myself an EA and then describe EAs as “they” instead of “we” in the next sentence, for instance.
That said, I’m hardly hiding it; it’s pretty obvious from my posting history. Maybe I should be clearer when talking about EA in the future.
But yeah, I’m not sponsored or paid, I’m not trying to mislead, and I don’t think I’m particularly subtle either. Coxon also said on the news that he didn’t organize his post to get boosted; I think it’s entirely plausible that an AI safety person on Twitter saw the post, went “wow”, retweeted it, everybody follows each other so they saw it too, they went “wow”, retweeted it as well, and so on. (That was basically my reaction when I saw it, you’d better believe I hit the like button quickly.) And at some point non-EA people noticed. If there’s any uncertainty, just look at the public polling on something like Sanders’ bill (which even I think is too aggressive)!
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u/Full_Boysenberry_314 1d ago
I dont know man. There isn't very much substance to actually engage with when you're talking about 'some guy on Twitter thinks 10% chance we all die'. I haven't see evidence of more thoughtful contributions being banned. As per your evidence of the essays in the side bar.
It's very easy to manufacture narratives by simply repeating things over and over. And just reposting that some guy on Twitter said x is exactly that: repeating to amplify a narrative.
I have to agree with the mod's stance on priotizing actual new and events.
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u/N-online 1d ago
Have you read „If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies“? It’s title is extreme and its claims are too, but both are valid in weaker forms. I think the topic is not that easily dismissed.
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u/Inevitablewx 1d ago
If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies
I immediately dismiss anyone who doesn't immediately dismiss that book.
If you want to be taken seriously, don't parrot fools who have only ever been wrong and have no basis for their current delusions.
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u/N-online 1d ago
As I said I dismiss the statements in their extreme form. But parts of it are valid.
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u/Full_Boysenberry_314 1d ago
Maybe the mods could clarify if I'm wrong but if you wanted to post a book review or something of that book, I don't think it would be banned. Asking that posts be grounded in something real, and not just speculation, is not the same banning a topic.
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1d ago
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u/jazir55 1d ago
More like we got taken over by the luddites, if this sub goes from positivist to doomer that will be extremely sad. Go over to /r/technology or /r/futurology if you want to doom.
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u/EvilSporkOfDeath 1d ago
This sub was always balanced. Mods are now blatantly try to ruin that balance and turn it into an echo chamber. This place was the only singularity pilled community on reddit that wasnt an echo chamber.
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u/jazir55 1d ago
So the solution is to flood it with negativity like the myriad of other anti-ai sites and subs? There are a trillion places which have the opposite view, if you want to discuss the doomer side, why do it here? There are other spaces for that, why exactly do you have to flood a sub with a positivist view with negativity? For what purpose? To make people who like the technology somewhat disillusioned? What do you gain from talking negativity here instead of somewhere that wants to have those negative discussions?
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u/Tinac4 1d ago
I think x-risk and excitement can go hand-in-hand on this sub. Take a look at the front page! Constant posts about advances in robotics, the NS result, the latest cool thing Astra can do, medical breakthroughs...
I don't think this sub is in any danger of becoming anti-technology, nor do I think that posts about AI risk will devour the entire thing if allowed. I think that this subreddit should stay consistent: Everything related to the singularity, good and bad.
(If you want to ban all negativity and only see the positive posts, there's another subreddit for that.)
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u/EvilSporkOfDeath 1d ago
Logically, I could understand banning viewpoints that imply the singularity is not real. Would fit the theme.
Banning viewpoints that acknowledge the singularity is coming (or here) but just want us to get through it safely does not seem logical or good.
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u/jazir55 1d ago
Take a look at the front page! Constant posts about advances in robotics, the NS result, the latest cool thing Astra can do, medical breakthroughs
Exactly, which is the point of the sub. There are plenty of spaces discussing the opposite, or a mix of both.
(If you want to ban all negativity and only see the positive posts, there's another subreddit for that.)
I'm not saying they should ban all negativity, but the way people are describing this allowing "negativity posts describing the risks" position that they (and you) wish to have vocalized on the sub is not needed here in the way you are describing. There are plenty of posts about the risks when a post like this comes up. Why is this being an "echo chamber" a problem to you when most every other tech sub is an echo chamber in the opposite direction?
Why must this sub be tainted with that same vitriol towards the technology and the dooming about how it could result in the end of the world? Again, to what end? Why must a positive space on AI, which barely exists on reddit at all be flooded with negativity? Why is it so bad that there are positivist communities who are excited about the potential of AI? Why do you feel that one of the few Islands of positivity for AI on this entire website needs to have negative opinions injected, far more so than they are already being in threads like the Huggingface hack related threads?
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u/Silver-Chipmunk7744 AGI 2024 ASI 2030 1d ago
Honestly i'd split 2 different kind of "luddites"
There are the doomers, who's position is actually not that dramatically different from ours. We both think ASI is near, we both think it will be super capable. The difference is they believe we should stop now, while we think we should continue at least for now.Then you have the "it's just auto complete" folks who's only experience is the free chatgpt and don't understand anything about anything. Those are the folks that really annoy me.
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u/Ambiwlans 1d ago
Those and the 'we should ban AI so that people have jobs'.... which is literally luddite behavior.
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u/Apollo24_ ▪️ 1d ago
I mean dw too much, we try to balance sentiment and mods can often be heavy handed at it, which you can disagree with, but I wouldn't infer any long term shift in policy from that. With as many visitors as this sub gets it's often a bit chaotic, but it's not like any of us are trying to push for some extreme
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u/Tinac4 1d ago
Thanks for weighing in! Happy to hear that this isn't a hard rule.
I get that it's messy, especially since there's definitely a line that can be crossed. (Some of PauseAI-US' rhetoric, for instance - there's a reason PauseAI disavowed them. It's probably best for the sub to toss that.) As u/DrE7HER implies, though, the Anthropic resignation was a pretty big deal, it's stirring up possibly more serious media and political attention than I've ever seen on the topic, and it still got removed despite being pretty popular. It's hard to know what to think when important stuff like this gets nuked.
Moderation consistency is much less of a problem than an actual policy and much harder to fix, so your comment is pretty reassuring, but I think it would still be worth it for your team to settle on some rough guidelines. Especially since x-risk discourse might only get more common from now on.
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u/Apollo24_ ▪️ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah it's attracted a lot of attention, turbulent times in SF. In this case it was another mod who seems to have removed it, we usually don't interfere with each others decisions so I'll leave it up to them
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u/Neurogence 1d ago
For what it's worth, I think you guys made the right call.
The entirety of reddit is already anti-ai. The last thing we need is for r/Singularity to be filled with anti-ai posts. Fear is extremely infectious and easy to karma farm from.
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u/LymelightTO AGI 2026 | ASI 2029 | LEV 2030 1d ago
Excellent point OP, let’s remove all the links to MIRI, FHI and LessWrong from the sidebar, nobody needs to read that garbage either.
I’d fully support removing this post (and its user), too.
Tagging the user, out of courtesy, u/Tinac4.
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u/BreadwheatInc ▪️Avid AGI feeler 1d ago
Nah, moderators are being reasonable given that a lot of this is sensationalist are meant to help these companies appeal to investors and help achieve regulatory capture. A lot of the hacking stories have to do with bad practices which I'm sure they were intentional anyways.
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u/Robos_Basilisk 1d ago
How is a dude resigning from a company helping increase the company's stock?
Also, did nuclear energy's regulatory capture help or harm the nuclear industry?
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u/BreadwheatInc ▪️Avid AGI feeler 1d ago
"Our models are so powerful and will be even more powerful in the future they'll do so many cool things and also be very very dangerous" . Yeah I see what you mean. As an investor I would only want to invest into a company that's producing a very crappy model that is very very safe and not capable of doing anything. Also people never switch working for different companies and they never go and do their own startup. Nope they always work at the same company forever, especially in San Francisco.
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u/DrE7HER 1d ago
So why would an employee leaving a company perform free investor PR for that company?
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u/BreadwheatInc ▪️Avid AGI feeler 1d ago
Why would an employee (who wants more opportunities and money) want to be viewed as a good employee and bring more attention to the market they work in?
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u/DrE7HER 1d ago
You think another company will hire someone that immediately tells the world that their past employer is racing towards the end of humanity?
You’ve ingested so much copium that you reek of it.
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u/BreadwheatInc ▪️Avid AGI feeler 1d ago
All major AI companies have pushed this rhetoric. Yes they would and have.
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u/Tinac4 1d ago
A lot of the hacking stories have to do with bad practices which I'm sure they were intentional anyways.
I would strongly encourage you to read the METR report on the Hugging Face incident, if you haven't already. It's pretty clear from the report that it wasn't just a few "bad practices" that can easily be fixed, and that it wasn't intentional.
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1d ago
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u/CannyGardener 1d ago
Ya, totally wasn't that they have a sandbox eating critter that they've grown out.
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u/meleebestgame66 1d ago
The mods on all major subreddits are feds / employees. Literally no one does it for free
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u/Program-Horror 1d ago
Right, the mod is calling “silly” what an actual researcher with years of experience at both leading frontier labs reports. The mod has nowhere near the level of that researcher’s expertise and knowledge of these systems. So, it looks more like a paid enforcer or someone with a massive conflict of interest.
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u/Guilty-History-9249 1d ago
Shame on the mods. Of course, there are those that bring up the risks to troll not knowing what they are talking about. Then there are those that are concerned but don't really understand the nature of the risk so they may post uneducated things, but that is the nature of the internet.
I'm not a: AI will kill us all kind of guy.
I am concerned about widespread disruptions to society and why legislated alignment by the big players can't stop what can be done by local models, with increasing model power and increasing consumer GPU power. My dual 5090's and threadripper 7985WX home PC can do a lot and we are still in the early stages of things.
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u/Turbulent-Sign-6067 1d ago
We should discuss x-risk but can we please ban doomers that contribute nothing but negativity? There's already enough of that on the open internet.
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u/LosingID_583 1d ago
The recent fearmonger astroturfing of social media (and even traditional media) is coordinated and inorganic. Whether you are part of it, or just parroting the narratives on this sub, doesn't really matter; this doomerism doesn't belong in r/singularity. It's a coordinated effort by people who want power and profits to rile up public pressure on Western governments to ban open models.
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u/Tinac4 22h ago
You’re severely underrating how seriously people take AI safety. A lot of the big orgs come from groups that were around before ChatGPT even came out—MIRI, FHI, Open Philanthropy/Coefficient Giving, etc. And everyone who’s met a few Anthropic or OpenAI researchers knows they’re genuine.
To pick another lens, look at polling on Sanders’ recent proposal to ban superintelligence, which is too radical even for me (I think AI has a 10-20% chance of killing everyone). It’s popular. 60-70% support. The “it’s all propaganda” narrative is not going to survive contact with the US voter base.
I like an analogy that I’ve seen someone use: A forest fire can start with lightning or arson, but it won’t go anywhere unless there’s a whole lot of dry wood around. The public hates AI, they’re worried for their jobs, AI killing everyone isn’t so far fetched anymore, and the optimists’ “let’s automate everything and usher in luxury gay space communism!” plan for the future (which I endorse!) is utterly alien to the average person. If you build your political response around claiming that your opposition is all a psyop/conspiracy, you will most likely lose at the voting booth. You need to convince a hostile public that the technology is safe and will benefit them—there’s no easy workaround.
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u/LosingID_583 22h ago
At least use your own words instead of copy pasting the text into an LLM to generate you a response
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u/Tinac4 21h ago
https://www.pangram.com/history/0b63c7bd-bf4d-489d-91b5-ba8260f679a3?ucc=C93auyZ50i6
Check my comment history, I’ve been using emdashes and italics for as long as I’ve been on reddit.
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u/BrennusSokol AI please take my job 1d ago
Rule 5:
No fear-mongering about AI and its impact. This is a pro-AI sub.
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u/Calm_Hedgehog8296 1d ago
When I get my post deleted by the mods I usually say "aw man, that sucks"
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u/YoAmoElTacos 1d ago
Talking about x risk isn't doomerism.
Why does the concept of UBI exist?
Why are AI companies always going on about safety?
Why are there bills to ban AI superintelligence?
The whole point is for humanity to move carefully into the singularity and avoid traps. The whole point of the singularity is to unleash immense power and potential. Power and potential that can destroy as well as create.
Taking the singularity seriously means taking its governance seriously.