by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Tech Bros — specifically Marc Andreessen — are growing hysterical at the prospect that AGI will be in some way hampered by the “woke cancel culture mob” that wants our future hard AI overlord to be “woke.”
Now, this hysteria does raise an interesting — and ominous — possibility. We’re so divided that people may see AGI as some sort of objective arbiter to the point that they use whatever answer it gives to a public policy question as the final word on the matter.
As such, extremists on both sides will rush to the AGI, ask it a dumb extremist question and run around saying, in effect, “Well, God agrees with me, so obviously my belief system is the best.”
In short, humans are dumb.
I definitely don’t agree with Andreessen that this is all a setup for “World War Orwell.” I say this because AGI has reached a tipping point and, as such, we’re all just going to have to deal with the consequences. I definitely think there might be an attempt by one side or the other to instill a political agenda into AGI just because humans are dumbass assholes who are into shit like that.
There is a grander endgame to all of this — we may have to solve the Trump Problem one way or another before we get to play with the goodies of AGI. We may have to have a Second American Civil War in the United States and a Third World War globally before we can turn our attention to the consequences of the macro trends of AGI, automation, robotics and the metaverse.
History may not repeat, but it does rhyme.
