Comment by m000
10 hours ago
How about the present and his personal beliefs?
"I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies, and to defeat our autocratic adversaries."
This reads like his objection is not on "autocratic", but on "adversaries". Autocratic friends & family are cool with him. A clear wink to a certain administration with autocratic tendencies.
Some people can’t help themselves to read this like a Ouija board.
That all works right up until the United States becomes autocratic and that process is well underway.
So yes, the second part of your comment is what is going to come back to haunt them. The road to hell is paved with the best intentions.
The US is already autocratic when it comes to people in many other countries, where the US government didn't like their democratically elected governments and decided to pick a new one for them instead.
Western liberal ideals are better than the opposite. It is misanthropic to build autocratic societies.
China's ideals make better public services and puts less pressure on environment. But China may not be the opposite you are referring to here.
western liberal democracies tend to use "autocratic" as an epithet (though, i guess, there are fewer countries that marker is used against for which it's false now than ~50 years ago). for the first sentence, "the opposite" of western liberal ideas will yield 10 answers from 9 people :-)