[dontupvoteme]

Turns out we already have alignment, it's called capitalism.

[mbgerring]

This is true and we do not talk about it enough. Moreover, Capitalism is itself an unaligned AI, and understanding it through that lens clarifies a great deal.

[lowmagnet]

oh no, it's just a real world reinforcement model

[panarky]

People experience existential terror from AI because it feels like massive, pervasive, implacable forces that we can't understand or control, with the potential to do great harm to our personal lives and to larger social and political systems, where we have zero power to stop it or avoid it or redirect it. Forces that benefit a few at the expense of the many.

What many of us are actually experiencing is existential terror about capitalism itself, but we don't have the conceptual framework or vocabulary to describe it that way.

It's a cognitive shortcut to look for a definable villain to blame for our fear, and historically that's taken the form of antisemitism, anti-migrant, anti-homeless, even ironically anti-communist, and we see similar corrupted forms of blame in antivax and anti-globalist conspiracy thinking, from both the left and the right.

While there are genuine x-risk hazards from AI, it seems like a lot of the current fear is really a corrupted and misplaced fear of having zero control over the foreboding and implacable forces of capitalism itself.

AI is hypercapitalism and that is terrifying.

[sudosysgen]

This is a pretty old idea, which dates back to the study of capitalism itself. Here's some articles on it : https://harvardichthus.org/2013/10/what-gods-we-worship-capi... and https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/marx-on-capit...

[exolymph]

Nick Land type beat

[sgregnt]

You mean freedom is an analigned AI?

[throwaway5959]

How does capitalism work if there aren’t any workers to buy the products made by the capitalists? Not being argumentative here, I really want to know.

[impossiblefork]

The way it works in any country where workers can't afford to buy the products today, so I imagine as in those countries that function most like the stereotypical African developing country.

So I imagine that the result would be that industry devolved into the manufacturing of luxury products, in the style of the top-class products of ancient Rome.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

The machines can buy the products. We already have HFT, which obviously has little to do with actual products people are buying or selling. Just number go up/down.

[austhrow743]

Transfer payments, rent, dividends would provide income. People would then use it to buy things just like they do now.

[lrvick]

All that matters are quarterly profits.

[Atotalnoob]

Honestly don’t know if these kinds of people have thought that far ahead

[cyanydeez]

Yes, thos is definitely the signal that capitalism eill determine the value.of AI.

SAME way.google search is now a steaming garbage.pile.