The “AI safety” movement, led by companies like Anthropic, is not about
preventing runaway superintelligence but rather about controlling
thought and narrative.
Anthropic’s content moderation system
filters out inquiries and commands that challenge certain political
ideologies, such as climate change, gender identity and election
integrity.
The movement’s goal is to create an infrastructure
for automated censorship, where AI systems parrot the “right” opinions
and associate with the “right” kind of people, rather than allowing
users to explore ideas and have honest discussions.
In 2021, a
group of researchers dramatically departed OpenAI, the company behind
ChatGPT. Led by Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s former vice president of
research, they cited deep concerns about “AI safety.” The company was
moving too fast, they warned, prioritising commercial interests over
humanity’s future. The risks were said to be existential. These Effective Altruists were going to do things the right way.
Their
solution? Start a new company called Anthropic, premised on building AI
“the right way” with “safety” (that word will become a recurring
theme), and “proper guardrails.” They initially raised hundreds of
millions (today, that number is in the tens of billions) from investors
who bought the pitch: we’re the good guys preventing runaway artificial
general intelligence (“AGI”).
Noble, right? Except these
supposed guardrails against AGI have become pretty much impossible to
quantify. What we do have is an incredibly sophisticated content
moderation system that filters inquiries and commands through a Silicon
Valley thought bubble. It doesn’t seem like they’re trying to prevent
AGI from destroying humanity, but instead, to prevent you from
challenging the core tenets of their political philosophy....<<<Read More>>>...
