I must confess I have a personal vendetta against Yudkowsky and his cult. I studied computer science in college. As an undergrad, I worked as an AI research assistant. I develop software for a living. This is my garden the LessWrong crowd is trampling.
Zizek fucking sucks but there was at least some takeaway that doesn't need big words, such as "we don't need to be aware of the ideology we absorb for that ideology to affect us."
Big Yud's got fucking nothing of value.
LOGI had some flawed promise but he's gone progressively down the road of pseudo scientistic mysticism ever since and now his tweets have no relationship to reality and are entirely made out of what his wierd SF techbro sponsors want to hear.
It's not even good mysticism. Like is there a long term danger from AGI...probably a little. Is this even a remotely rigorous or effective way of ascertaining that risk? Nope its all warmed over neoplatonist bullshit cloaked in science terms
It's awfully fucking convenient that the "longtermists" tied to such techbro movements just about universally conclude "the best way to increase chances of eternal life in techno heaven is to make the rich richer, faster!"
Fuck I know it's all a grift but I dearly hope life extension turns out to be possible just so China can beat the fuckers to the punch and roll it out for free to the entire population but not to billionaires.
I think in some ways "singularity" grifts/cults pull people in with that hope that immortality might trickle down to the masses someday and not just be a hoarded luxury for the rich. If they can't distribute insulin without thousands of percent markup a century after it became possible to synthesize it, what chance do theoretical life extension drugs/technologies have of being affordable?
Whenever someone says "AGI" you can mentally substitute "cold fusion." To the best of our knowledge, we have little reason to think such a thing is even possible and plenty of reason to think it isn't.
LLMs got marketed as "AI" successfully (not successful AI but as a marketing stunt that stuck) so I'm pretty sure false "AGI" grifting will be another marketing triumph if capitalism manages to stick around that much longer.