This is a linkpost for https://rootsofprogress.org/quote-quiz-drifting-into-dependence
I googled it. So, it's that.
When you post the answer, can you also say what your purpose was? Is this intended to cast doubt on the view it expresses by associating it to the larger document it's drawn from, or boost the original by saying that this bit of it seems sensible, or something else?
I can say my purpose now, before I give the answer. I'm glad you asked, because people tend to make assumptions.
My purpose is neither to cast doubt on the views expressed here nor to boost their source. It's just a piece of intellectual history. I think it's interesting that someone had this view at a particular time and place, and in a particular context. It's interesting to think about what evidence they had that might have led them to this view, and what evidence they clearly didn't have (e.g., because it hadn't happened yet) that therefore couldn't have been part of what led them to this view. I think when we trace the history of ideas, and see how far back they go, we learn something about the ideas themselves, and the arguments that led to them.
holy shit... he said this.
I had no idea he was a pre-dune butlerian, I thought it was a more general aversion to general societal capability progress.
Uh, I now consider him to be an ordinary member of the ranks of destructive anarchists - those who would destroy the power of centralized authority rather than construct a network of caring resistant to centralization's harmful impacts, who I would call constructive anarchists (but there may be name conflicts with this use of the word, suggestions for better naming are welcome.)
As what I would call a constructive anarchist, I at the same time cannot deeply fault the views of those who choose violence, because I cannot stop them except by constructing solutions to the wounds that lead them to choose violence to retain or achieve empowerment-of-selfhood. destructiveness is an understandable, though unacceptable, response, and I cannot say that violence against violence can ever be disallowed, even though it is terrible and not a true solution to the problem of violence. the disease of conflict spreads through conflictons, and it is slowed somewhat when the conflictons reflect instead of being emitted at someone not involved, and yet what I want is to end the emission of new conflictons... (This is a paragraph I felt would be interesting to toss into metaphor.systems, and it sure was; the suggested search is also interesting and very different)
but geez. what a mess we're in.
before I see the results, my guesses:
8%: EY (early in career)
18%: dude who first brought up superintelligence in that one paper, name not available in brain
15%: turing
20%: minsky or contemporary from the early ai capabilities work, before 1990
39%: all my guesses were wrong
result:
all my guesses were wrong; closest match "contemporary of minsky" but he wasn't an early ai researcher himself
Quote quiz: who said this? (No fair looking it up). I have modified the original quotation slightly, by making a handful of word substitutions to bring it up to date:
It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all power to AI. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to AI nor that AI would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on AI that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the AI’s decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and as AI becomes more and more intelligent, people will let AI make more and more of their decisions for them, simply because AI-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the AI will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the AI off, because they will be so dependent on it that turning it off would amount to suicide.
I’ll post the answer, and the unedited original quotation, next week.
UPDATE: Here's the answer.