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Surprisingly, AI researchers are like Leninists in a number of important ways.
In their story, they're part of the vanguard working to bring about the utopia.
The complexity inherent to their project justifies their special status, and legitimizes their disregard of the people's concerns, which are dismissed as unenlightened.
Detractors are framed as too unsophisticated to understand how unpopular or painful measures are actually in their long-term interest, or a necessary consequence of a teleological inevitability underlying all of history.
Roughly this analogy was explored at length in the possessed machines. It seems pretty interesting, although I onlly looked at this summary This was about the Bolshevik's that were Leninist's spiritual forebears. It's written by an anonymous person from a major lab I believe, so I think it might capture some of that ethos that I don't understand.
Independent researchers have a lot less of that orientation. I'd say most of us don't want to rush toward the glorious future at current cost. That would both probably get us all killed, and with an embarrass... (read more)