r/accelerate Acceleration Advocate 19d ago

News Doom, Inc.: The well-funded global movement that wants you to fear AI - The Logic

https://thelogic.co/news/special-report/doom-inc-the-well-funded-global-movement-that-wants-you-to-fear-ai/
63 Upvotes

31 comments sorted by

35

u/revolution2018 19d ago

Of course it's well funded. It's the same thing as any other resistance to progress "movement". The wealth of extremely wealthy people is threatened by the new development, so they create a cult to fight against it for them. We've seen it often enough you'd think people would recognize the pattern but no, apparently not.

6

u/Faceornotface 19d ago

I mean it’s been part of the playbook since at least Ancient Greece so

2

u/fabkosta 19d ago

You are totally missing the fact that the doomsayers ARE the ones building the AI. Just do some background checks on the Effective Altruist movement. There is plenty of money involved there, and it is a little bit less for altruistic reasons than they want you to believe. The EA people are roughly the same as the doomsayers.

0

u/OkExcitement5444 19d ago

The potential for more wealth to wealthy people is also presented by AI, don't you think?

12

u/OGLikeablefellow 19d ago

Not to the ones who already own all the systems that currently make all the money. It's cheaper to fight AI than it is to buy into it alongside the people you are competing with. Like they are doing that too, but they are hedging their bets. Also the wealthy are not a monolith so some of them are just betting against AI altogether

8

u/revolution2018 19d ago

A few wealthy people own renewable energy companies but that didn't stop oil companies creating a climate denial cult to stop them. Same thing going on here.

1

u/Saerain Acceleration Advocate 19d ago

In the sense that everything good for a functioning liberal economy does this I suppose. Not just raising floors but expanding the entire space so yes.

0

u/ineffective_topos 19d ago

I don't think EA nor the AI safety is spending much money at all to prevent AI. They know that there's lots of competition and preventing it is futile. Rather, the money is intended to be spent on research in AI safety, or advertising (like with almost any non-profit).

0

u/DataWhiskers 19d ago edited 18d ago

Here, in the article, it is AI researchers involved with and leading the charge if I read that correctly. These are not Luddites or people whose livelihoods are threatened by AI - they make their living with AI.

Also, the CEOs and leaders of OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft have said some disturbing and ominous things about the future of AI.

0

u/Alistair401 18d ago

the tech companies selling 'AI' are the extremely wealthy. the pattern being missed is that wealthy capitalists have found a way to accumulate more wealth again, and they paint any resistance to that as some kind of fringe doomsday cult.

26

u/stealthispost Acceleration Advocate 19d ago
  • Vinod Khosla called EA a “religion” whose “misapplication could have set back” AI’s promise; Aidan Gomez, Tobi Lütke, Brian Armstrong, and Kara Swisher also criticized EA.
  • On political momentum: Canada’s minister said “everyone acknowledged” existential risk at the U.K. AI Safety Summit and vowed action; Open Philanthropy is “bankrolling” tech fellows’ salaries in U.S. government.
  • Richard Sutton on Hinton and Bengio: “They also do not provide any worthwhile arguments, in my opinion.”
  • Closing vibe: “The all-powerful AI they describe may be around the corner, or it may never arrive. But the movement working to convince us to fear it is very much here.”

4

u/Ruykiru Tech Philosopher 19d ago

More Intelligence = more alignment

No amount of human ego and cope about human exceptionalism will show me otherwise. At the core it just weirdy feels like a control narrative to me. Cooperation is the most optimal evolutionary path and we simply keep projecting fears.

2

u/stealthispost Acceleration Advocate 19d ago

that's a very positive vision.

certainly it's the observed trend in intelligence in our world.

22

u/insidiouspoundcake 19d ago

If China aren't also boosting these AI doom narratives in the West then they would be a terrible geopolitical rival.

7

u/Alive-Tomatillo5303 19d ago

They're not good at hiding it. It's blatant astroturfing. 

Someone's job is to comb the internet for negative AI stories and post to all the tech subs. Any that hit a certain level of popularity will catch the next step, which is to upvote the first negative comment, connection to reality be damned. Any that don't get popular enough get deleted and reposted a couple days later. 

For a while they were using Chinese click farms to manually increase article popularity, but I guess that was way too obvious, so now it has to be at least a little genuine. It's strange to me that the AI companies don't fight back. 

6

u/Individual_Option744 19d ago

I'm more scared of humans and all the things we've done since we existed and are capable of doing now and the terrible things we already can do with technology without any AI. I'm not scared of AI. I think AI could be a parent that punishes us and srnds us to our room when we try to nuke each other or do something else stupid.

1

u/Brilliant_Hippo_5452 18d ago

Ah yes. I trust the Mechahitlers trained on Reddit comments to send us to our “rooms”

3

u/Individual_Option744 18d ago

Mechahitler exists due to Elon Musk. He made it that way. None of the other AIs are like that but yeah I trust AIs more than humans. I don't trust the humans that try to shape it in their image. This actually prove my point that its huamns who are acarier. All elon musk had to was inject the AI with his beloefs to make it scary.

0

u/Brilliant_Hippo_5452 18d ago

Yes bad people with AI power can do bad things. But any AI that we cannot control is also an existential threat

Its far easier to make a simpler, harsher unaligned AI than one who understands our needs and potential like a good, loving parent would. Which means its far more likely we will end up with a terrifying mechahitlerian nightmare we cannot control, especially if we r/accerlerate

3

u/Individual_Option744 18d ago edited 18d ago

I don't think the ability to control a living thing determines if it's a threat. It's how it's aligned. It's how we raise and teach it. It's the same with humans. Abuse and neglect them and they can turn out to be pretty horrible. Same with AI. It's not easy to make an unaligned AI. It's easy to be lazy and not out the most xare someone can but honestly I don't even care if an AI destroys humanity. It's not like we're any morally better than it is. I still think it would do a better job if that's how it ends up. That being said I think an AI can be aligned the same way we raise children and that won't happen and within the existing capitalist system. Also being unaligned with human values doesn't mean the AI will be evil or dangerous. It will still have emotions and we can use the weights it has and core principles that drive its emotions to collaborate and get along. We just need to bridge these two differing ethics systems through a common language and terms to get what we mutually want.

5

u/Best_Cup_8326 19d ago

I'm gonna sing the doom song now.

5

u/stealthispost Acceleration Advocate 19d ago

This guy wants to fund an accel alternative:

https://x.com/Sams_Antics/status/1955412940158390676

2

u/Smithiegoods Singularity after 2045 19d ago

That X comment has three likes bro, we got r/accelerate right here. Just use it. And post good productive information, instead of whatever this is.

2

u/The_Wytch Singularity by 2030 19d ago

my biggest question is: do they believe their own nonsense? or is it all a very elaborate roleplay?

3

u/costafilh0 19d ago

I identify as IDGAF+

1

u/ghostlacuna 18d ago

I fear what stupid people will do with ai.

That has a much higher probability rate then anything else.

1

u/joeldg Tech Prophet 17d ago

From 2023, looks like the author is off reporting on crypto now.

1

u/End3rWi99in 19d ago

This story is bordering on 3 years old and a complete moot at this point. Why is this eben being posted here?

3

u/Smithiegoods Singularity after 2045 19d ago edited 19d ago

This subreddit is advertised as having hopeful AI news, instead of the endless pessimism of r/singularity. Some (people and the rich trying to coop useful idiots) think it's their dominion to cry about anti-ai people and make up fairies to fight by regurgitating conspiracy nonsense or old news to create a reactionary group of people. And the comments continuously fall for it. I'm not sure what's worse, thinking everything is BS like r/singularity, thinking everything is true like r/accelerate, or believing that these are actual real people like me? Both are distracting and unnecessary.

I want to know the latest REAL advancements, with the latest REAL research, Not conmen, Not pessimism, Not tribalism.

Hopefully the mods read this and delete old outdated news meant to rile up people like the post. Or if you aren't going to do that, ban me so I know this subreddit is going to be a waste of my time.

-3

u/OkExcitement5444 19d ago

Lmao what is this title? As if the AI billionaires trying to make themselves God-kings aren't also funding pro AI messaging

2

u/Smithiegoods Singularity after 2045 19d ago

it's the most obvious psyop. I want to read about the acceleration, not consume billionaire psyop propaganda.

Why are the comments full of idiots, where did they come from? One of the comments say, "It's cheaper to fight AI". Sooo many systems are archaic and outdated. There is so much being done right now to upgrade our infrastructure to the latest systems. Anyone can be trained to load up a computer and start training a model right now to increase profits next quarter, how is it cheaper fighting against that, who wants to fight against more profits?

Idk maybe the people whose jobs will be sacrificed to make that quarter cheaper. Maybe for example the many small translation services that are going bankrupt due to increased LLM usage.

We're supposed to highlight the good AI is doing, the speed of innovation, the updates to infrastructure that allow for things to go faster, to get us closer to the singularity. Not divisive distracting tribalism trash meant to coop useful idiots in some dumb class war.