I actually really like your title for your new book Émile and I am very much looking forward to reading it when it comes out. I personally think the title “Modern-Day Eugenics” works better than “Eugenics on Steroids”, only because I feel that the phrase “X on steroids” is overdone. But hey it’s your book, and I am but a humble subscriber :).
I also want to say that I am very sorry for you regarding this Sam Kirchner situation. In our last subscriber meeting I talked about how the one thing I hate is how stuff like “ASI is imminent and it’s gonna kill is all” is that if that gets to the wrong person and that person latches on to that, it can completely destroy them and that is not a good thing because I hate seeing people suffer from this kind of stuff, especially young people like myself. With Sam, I have no idea what he was going through but it sounds like this “ASI” got to him and I feel terrible for him and his friends like you. This is exactly the kind of stuff I never want to see and why I can’t stand the Doomers like Yud, Kokotajlo, Altman, Ilya and so many more.
I just want to say that I’m very sorry for this Émile and I hope Sam gets the help he needs. I also hope that with Sam people will hopefully realize, “Hey maybe this doomer stuff is harmful to people”. But I can only hope. I know you don’t really know me Émile, but I do hope you’re doing alright with this.
This piece really made me think about the wild outputs from models like Grok. That Slovakia hypothetical is genuinely disturbing. What do you see as the biggest long-term risk of such a value system emebedded in powerful AI? Your analysis is always so insightful and spot on.
Hello Émile, last week I was in Amsterdam for a documentary film festival - I am a documentary film maker- and I had the pleasure to watch your interviews in a German film about Elon Musk and Tesla, (called Elon Musk unveiled -the Tesla experiment) .It was very interesting and you were brilliant!
I'm going to offer an observation, because I think if more people understood this then the coincidence of mental illnesses known as the TESCREAL bundle would become transparently midwit.
Grok's programming to reveal Musk as a singular genius whose net utility value is calculated to be greater than the rest of humanity combined (greater even than Kim Jung Un's utility value), Zuckerbot's callous indifference to human suffering, and every TESCREAList uttering about longterm, happy post-humanoids all share a common feature. They are refelctions of an overdeveloped left hemisphere, the little homunculus that doesn't know it's trapped inside the map of a windowless room, utterly severed from reality.
Great post! Thanks Émile.
I actually really like your title for your new book Émile and I am very much looking forward to reading it when it comes out. I personally think the title “Modern-Day Eugenics” works better than “Eugenics on Steroids”, only because I feel that the phrase “X on steroids” is overdone. But hey it’s your book, and I am but a humble subscriber :).
I also want to say that I am very sorry for you regarding this Sam Kirchner situation. In our last subscriber meeting I talked about how the one thing I hate is how stuff like “ASI is imminent and it’s gonna kill is all” is that if that gets to the wrong person and that person latches on to that, it can completely destroy them and that is not a good thing because I hate seeing people suffer from this kind of stuff, especially young people like myself. With Sam, I have no idea what he was going through but it sounds like this “ASI” got to him and I feel terrible for him and his friends like you. This is exactly the kind of stuff I never want to see and why I can’t stand the Doomers like Yud, Kokotajlo, Altman, Ilya and so many more.
I just want to say that I’m very sorry for this Émile and I hope Sam gets the help he needs. I also hope that with Sam people will hopefully realize, “Hey maybe this doomer stuff is harmful to people”. But I can only hope. I know you don’t really know me Émile, but I do hope you’re doing alright with this.
Take care, and I’ll see you when I see you.
This piece really made me think about the wild outputs from models like Grok. That Slovakia hypothetical is genuinely disturbing. What do you see as the biggest long-term risk of such a value system emebedded in powerful AI? Your analysis is always so insightful and spot on.
Hello Émile, last week I was in Amsterdam for a documentary film festival - I am a documentary film maker- and I had the pleasure to watch your interviews in a German film about Elon Musk and Tesla, (called Elon Musk unveiled -the Tesla experiment) .It was very interesting and you were brilliant!
Re FB, I highly recommend The Chaos Machine by Pulitzer-nominated Max Fisher.
Absolute masterpiece on the catastrophic situation re how the attention economy results in unspeakable amounts of real-world harm.
I'm going to offer an observation, because I think if more people understood this then the coincidence of mental illnesses known as the TESCREAL bundle would become transparently midwit.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58955313-the-matter-with-things
Grok's programming to reveal Musk as a singular genius whose net utility value is calculated to be greater than the rest of humanity combined (greater even than Kim Jung Un's utility value), Zuckerbot's callous indifference to human suffering, and every TESCREAList uttering about longterm, happy post-humanoids all share a common feature. They are refelctions of an overdeveloped left hemisphere, the little homunculus that doesn't know it's trapped inside the map of a windowless room, utterly severed from reality.