Anyway, Eliezer's obsessions, singularitarianism, and all the rest were castles built in the air. It's easy to convince yourself that an elaborate theory you can't falsify is true, though it's a dangerous thing to start believing in. Now that we are confronted with real AI systems that don't behave anything like what we posited or what Eliezer posited, the whole castle has collapsed from falsification. Unfortunately, people who have built huge portions of their life on top of the AI risk obsession, including Eliezer, seem unable to move on. There are real risks here of course, but they're not paperclip maximizers arising out of weird and arbitrary goals adopted by a hard takeoff singleton undertaking instrumental convergence.

@IAmArcIvanov @cremieuxrecueil Letters of Marque and Reprisal are not limited to permitting the authorized parties to take ships; they are allowed to conduct warfare on behalf of the authorizing country against its enemies.

@Altimor @8bit5_0 @ArthurB @QuintinPope5 BTW, I don't think 97% of the "believers" understand the arguments for or against either.

@IAmArcIvanov @cremieuxrecueil I think they have a very wide variety of choices.

@8bit5_0 @Altimor @ArthurB @QuintinPope5 You don't have to believe it, because it isn't true. Eliezer's assumptions weren't correct, so his conclusions aren't correct.

@IAmArcIvanov @cremieuxrecueil I don't think any European power is going to declare a US privateer to be a pirate ship if it's attacking Houthi vessels.

@IAmArcIvanov @cremieuxrecueil Letters of Marque are part of the US Constitution. Congress is specifically authorized to issue them. An authorized privateer operating under Letters of Marque as legal as any regular military vessel.

@burnt_jester Solid gold, magikarp.

There are a couple of interesting startups working to break the single vendor software lock in of the AI hardware world. Modular is one of them.

@burnt_jester Sometimes — sometimes — they are the correct alternative to parentheses.