AI safety is now mainstream. People are not being smart about it. I know there are memes about burning datacenters on your feed.
Please, do not engage with them. You still have plenty of room to fuck up your life or damage the public perception of the community if you do. Do not respond to extremist shit. Do not engage with stupid people. Do not get us all on the No Fly List.
One of the reasons I think this is worth writing down is my own ressentiment. I am baitable. People who used to call me an alarmist are now memeing about AI doom, and I'm fighting the urge to start screaming, "WE TOLD YOU"
Which would be bad. And more often than not, it wouldn't even be true. The things those memes imply are dramatically more extreme than anything you folks here were actually saying. I will not give an example; you've already imagined. Poorly understood but extremely memeable manifestos and their consequences have been a disaster for rational discussions.
I believe you are much more mature and less petty than I am, you won't fall for this. So here are some alternative paths to a fiasco I can think about: someone might try to provoke you; someone might say something so dumb that parodying them seems like a good idea; you might feel tempted to post an extreme version of your actual position as a “rent-lowering gunshot”; you might simply feel like baiting someone.
What I'm trying to say is that the current state of the discourse makes it unusually easy to say something extreme and stupid. And we still cannot afford that!
Because:
It WILL be taken seriously—whether by mistake or by design. Understanding that you're joking requires context. Learning that context is costly, and most people won't bother. And there are people who will gladly strawman you, who will present the most absurd shitpost as the position of the community. Don't make the propagandists' job easier.
It would be sad to push away the audience of sane people we've just acquired. People are finally updating, we should make it psychologically easy for them to keep updating. That effort will be sabotaged if we look like we hate them for their past positions, or if we just look batshit insane.
Being edgy is unlikely to make a difference. If the problem gets solved, it probably won't be because you were good at trolling.
If the problem gets solved and we survive, the public will forget that there was ever a problem. But your words, with your name tied to them, will stay on the internet forever. In a few years, the culture will have lost the context needed to understand what was a joke and what was your actual position If you are not careful with your bait, you might be forever known as an alarmist who called for violence.
And even if it doesn't get solved and we die, you have plenty of time to find yourself unable to board a flight.
Malicious propagandists will call you a terrorist, enemy of the state, etc. even if you do nothing wrong. You can be the saintliest, most innocent law-abiding activist, and they'll still call you a terrorist, because malicious propagandists are allowed to tell lies.
You can't avoid being lied about by being extra-pure, or by calling-out or abandoning your allies for posting memes (or for being sluts, for that matter).
AI safety is now mainstream. People are not being smart about it. I know there are memes about burning datacenters on your feed.
Please, do not engage with them. You still have plenty of room to fuck up your life or damage the public perception of the community if you do. Do not respond to extremist shit. Do not engage with stupid people. Do not get us all on the No Fly List.
One of the reasons I think this is worth writing down is my own ressentiment. I am baitable. People who used to call me an alarmist are now memeing about AI doom, and I'm fighting the urge to start screaming, "WE TOLD YOU"
Which would be bad. And more often than not, it wouldn't even be true. The things those memes imply are dramatically more extreme than anything you folks here were actually saying. I will not give an example; you've already imagined. Poorly understood but extremely memeable manifestos and their consequences have been a disaster for rational discussions.
I believe you are much more mature and less petty than I am, you won't fall for this. So here are some alternative paths to a fiasco I can think about: someone might try to provoke you; someone might say something so dumb that parodying them seems like a good idea; you might feel tempted to post an extreme version of your actual position as a “rent-lowering gunshot”; you might simply feel like baiting someone.
What I'm trying to say is that the current state of the discourse makes it unusually easy to say something extreme and stupid. And we still cannot afford that!
Because:
Understanding that you're joking requires context. Learning that context is costly, and most people won't bother. And there are people who will gladly strawman you, who will present the most absurd shitpost as the position of the community. Don't make the propagandists' job easier.
That effort will be sabotaged if we look like we hate them for their past positions, or if we just look batshit insane.
But your words, with your name tied to them, will stay on the internet forever. In a few years, the culture will have lost the context needed to understand what was a joke and what was your actual position If you are not careful with your bait, you might be forever known as an alarmist who called for violence.
Please, don't get us on the No Fly List.