Jan 27, 2024
Machine Alignment Monday 1/22/24
Business Insider: Larry Page Once Called Elon Musk A “Specieist”:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Google cofounder Larry Page disagree so severely about the dangers of AI it apparently ended their friendship.
At Musk's 44th birthday celebration in 2015, Page accused Musk of being a "specieist" who preferred humans over future digital life forms [...] Musk said to Page at the time, "Well, yes, I am pro-human, I fucking like humanity, dude."
A month later, Business Insider returned to the same question, from a different angle: Effective Accelerationists Don’t Care If Humans Are Replaced By AI:
A jargon-filled website spreading the gospel of Effective Accelerationism describes "technocapitalistic progress" as inevitable, lauding e/acc proponents as builders who are "making the future happen […] Rather than fear, we have faith in the adaptation process and wish to accelerate this to the asymptotic limit: the technocapital singularity," the site reads. "We have no affinity for biological humans or even the human mind structure.”
I originally thought there was an unbridgeable value gap between Page and e/acc vs. Musk and EA. But I can imagine stories that would put me on either side. For example: