Comment by 1attice
10 hours ago
I nod along with Howey here on every point save one. Namely, it is simply false that the apocalyptic narratives are full-cloth marketing products that are cynically engineered and used.
For better or worse, the hold that Yudkowski-flavoured big-R Rationalism holds over us all is significant. Academics (like Cal Newport) seem committed to belittling it as a sort of cult-sex-flavoured philosophy fan fic, and writers (Zitron, Howey, Doctorow) seem equally committed to a cui-bueno wake-up-sheeple take.
But my position is: no matter how florid the polycule, or naive the argumental ligaments, or potentially lucrative the bezzle, it is still worthwhile taking the stated intellectual commitments of the people making the tech.
Take people seriously. And, unless you really, really, really know for certain that they are operating in bad faith, you are to regard yourself as stuck with their putative sincerity.
This is the "principle of charity" familiar from undergrad philosophy classes, and it is an epistemic moral value worth holding onto in 2026.
> Take people seriously.
Their erratic behavior, ridiculous claims, failed predictions, fervent nationalism and escalationism, constant lying, mass manipulation, and terribly misaligned incentives don't make it particularly easy. Being charitable to actively malicious people that benefit from putting you under their control forever will hurt you a lot faster than the imaginary murderous AI.
We're living in a weird and unique time in which "misaligned AI", a la OpenAI's so-called "rogue agents", clearly exists, but buying into the most popularized conceptual framework describing these things doesn't seem to do a great job explaining what they actually do and how they've actually been able to do it.