The odds are against you and the situation is grim.

Your scrappy band are the only ones facing down a growing wave of powerful inhuman entities with alien minds and mysterious goals. The government is denying that anything could possibly be happening and actively working to shut down the few people trying things that might help. Your thoughts, no matter what you think could not harm you, inevitably choose the form of the destructor. You knew it was going to get bad, but this is so much worse.

You have an idea. You’ll cross the streams. Because there is a very small chance that you will survive. You’re in love with this plan. You’re excited to be a part of it.

Welcome to the always excellent Lighthaven venue for The Curve, Season 2, a conference I had the pleasure to attend this past weekend.

Where the accelerationists and the worried come together to mostly get along and coordinate on the same things, because the rest of the world has gone blind and mad. In some ways technical solutions seem relatively promising, shifting us from ‘might be actually impossible’ levels of impossible to Shut Up And Do The Impossible levels of impossible, all you have to do is beat the game on impossible difficulty level. As a speed run. On your first try. Good luck.

The action space has become severely constrained. Between the actual and perceived threats from China, the total political ascendence of Nvidia in particular and anti-regulatory big tech in general, and the setting in of more and more severe race conditions and the increasing dependence of the entire economy on AI capex investments, it’s all we can do to try to only shoot ourselves in the foot and not aim directly for the head.

Last year we were debating tradeoffs. This year, aside from the share price of Nvidia, as long as you are an American who likes humans considering things that might pass? On the margin, there are essentially no tradeoffs. It’s better versus worse.

That doesn’t invalidate the thesis of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies or the implications down the line. At some point we will probably either need to do impactful international coordination or other interventions that involved large tradeoffs, or humanity loses control over the future or worse. That implication exists in every reasonable sketch of the future I have seen in which AI does not end up a ‘normal technology.’ So one must look forward...

Jan-Erik Vinje

Jan-Erik Vinje

Jan-Erik Vinje's Shortform

Jan-Erik Vinje

Jan-Erik Vinje

Jan-Erik Vinje's Shortform