Not surprising that today's New York Times article about the singularity launders bullshit for big tech with just enough skepticism for plausible deniability
More impressive: the article quotes 15 different people.
Sundar Pichai
Reid Hoffman
Bill Gates
Elon Musk
Sam Altman
Baldur Bjarnason
John von Neumann
Irving John Good
Hans Moravec
Ray Kurzweil
Rodney Brooks
Jerry Kaplan
Ryan Schaeffer
Eric Schmidt
Charlies Stross
Yes, every single one of them is a man.
These are the usual suspects, but why is @cstross blowing the singularity apocalypse horn?
@alexshendi @ct_bergstrom If you read the article, then (assuming I haven't been wildly misquoted then lied to) you'd see I'm deeply cynical about the whole AI singularitarian nonsense. I'm at least one of the contrarian voices.
@cstross @alexshendi @ct_bergstrom I see the AI Singularity to be something that will happen eventually, but current #AI (Artificial Idiots) lack reasoning ability, and they are badly infected with bad data. GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out).
@Eka_FOOF_A @cstross @ct_bergstrom
I don't see any trends at the moment that promise this will be different in the (near) future.
@alexshendi @Eka_FOOF_A @ct_bergstrom The AI singularity is horseshit. Warmed-over Christian apocalpse horseshit (minus the God/Jesus nonsense). Roko's Basilisk should be the final clue: it emerges logically from the whole farrago of nonsense but it boils down to AI Satan punishing the acausal infidels for their AI original sin. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck: or in this case, a Christian heresy.
@cstross @alexshendi @Eka_FOOF_A @ct_bergstrom One of the big clues to this is that Singularity believers literally use Pascal's Wager as an argument. Even the most microscopic chance of creating a benevolent AI god is worth any price (so give us AI researchers all your money)!
@daylightatheism @cstross @alexshendi @Eka_FOOF_A @ct_bergstrom Are you sure you aren't misrepresenting their point?
Bostrom refers to Pascal's Mugging[1], not the original "wager" formulation.
Anyway, the point is to **avoid** racing to unbounded rewards, disregarding any current costs.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_mugging
That resolves Roko's too, and it was resolved for almost a decade now.
