> Yud is a doomsday cult leader (https://archive.is/YTqlI)
Are you really using that link to support your argument in the earnest? You know this was posted on April Fool's day? The text itself mentions it near the end, and it's also explicitly tagged as such directly below the headline/byline. At least warn people who're going to skim this.
> who has publicly advocated using mass murder in the form of nuclear weapons to forestall his predicted apocalypse.
You mean that bit from his article in Time Magazine? Where he talked about airstrikes against GPU farms might be necessary in case some country/group is violating the international moratorium he's proposing? I don't recall him advocating mass murder there, or ever. Of course, since he is insisting on a strong international agreement, military intervention - yes, including nuclear weapons - is part of the picture, because that's literally how international agreements are ultimately enforced.
As for the rest - the guy has been saying the same thing for way over a decade now. The mainstream interest only really picked up in the last half a year. But somehow he's in on it.
indeed, and by many who saw it regarded as a kookery, not justifying of much concern. If he wanted to preach to his S&M dunegon about the big bad machines that will punish you for all eternity, well not my circus, not my monkeys.
Thus far his followers who've turned violent have only directed it at their extended group [1] for not doing enough to stop the end of the world (and that one murder and attempted murder of their landlord [2], but I'm willing to believe that was a chance event and not a trend).
I now consider it an actual concern now that the profile has been expanded so dramatically there is a much greater risk that someone will fall for ℚ-anon who isn't so distracted by their S&M dungeon that they actually find time in their busy schedule to 'save the world'-- just like Qanon was some internet joke until the wrong person fell for it and rolled up to Comet Ping Pong and opened fire. That person only thought they were saving children from being sex slaves, whats someone powered by the belief that they are saving the lives all current and future children going to be willing to do? Their prophet says even nukes would be justified.
[And not just their lives-- there are fates worse than death, some of their scripture involves fearmongering about malevolent AI's simulating trillions of copies of people and subjecting them to the worst torture imaginable, just because they didn't do everything in their power to bring the malevolent AI into existence. Lets not even get into the fact that their proposed solution--since malevolent AI is inevitable unless we abandon advanced technologies "just don't do it" is only a short term fix at best-- to create an AI god embodying the values of the faithful so that it can permanently suppress all competing machine intelligence and engineering human life to 'optimize' away suffering.]
Maybe you live far enough away or don't have anyone you love peripherally connected to AI enough that you're not concerned that they'll be murdered due to this insanity, but I am a little worried and right now the best way I can think to mitigate the risk is to bring people's attention to the fact that they're normalizing and legitimizing a mentally ill position that expressly justifies the use of violence (and not just in "ha ha only serious" April fools posts) against a fanciful apocalyptic threat from the fevered imagination of a cult.
> Are you really using that link to support your argument in the earnest?
Yes, the post was presented as a joke but it legitimately reflects his position, as also reiterated in interviews and articles.
Moreover, it's a "rational" response to those who actually believe the claimed threat, particularly from the utilitarian ethics perspective advocated in ℚ-anon circles: they hold that it's ethical to murder a million to save billions (or trillions 'discounted to present value', counting all the humans that will never exist due to extinction-- "What matters most about our actions is their very long term effects.").
> I don't recall him advocating mass murder there
Nuclear weapons have been used twice in combat in human history. In one instance the death toll was a hundred and twenty nine thousand people, in the other it was two hundred and twenty six thousand people. The nuclear weapons in the US arsenal today are many times more powerful than those early weapons.
It's not like data centers are not blast hardened targets, no one has described NAFTA, the Paris agreement, or the berne convention as being enforced by nuclear weapons. In a serious publication with a readership of millions Yud unambiguously advocated using the threat of mass murder as a deterrent against parties performing too many mathematical calculations.
How many of his new followers will agree with the widespread death of a nuclear weapon as a proportional response but reject a few targeted kaczynski-grams as inappropriate?
(Heck even kaczynski only thought he was saving people from the general unhappiness brought on by technology, not extinction...)
[1] https://sfist.com/2019/11/19/four-people-in-guy-fawkes-masks...
[2] https://sfist.com/2022/11/22/two-alleged-squatters-charged-i...
I only meant to imply the latter. I suppose I inadvertently applied the former by mentioning him juxtaposed to Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore, although it is a stretch for me to even see those two as "Thought Leaders" in the present day. Chomsky is some weird kind of anarcho-syndicalist and Michael Moore seemed to fade away during the Obama years. Neither are really "leading" anything these days.
> A week or two ago ... Yudkowsky was apparently a Complete Nobody.
There is nothing contradicting being a punching bag and a complete nobody. It's like a D-list actor whose entire career is to get his ass kicked by the hero in action movies. Or the B-tier heel in professional wrestling. You might eventually recognize his face and he may even achieve some cult-status fame. Their whole purpose is to display the might of the eventual hero so we often allow them to embody some apparent strength so that a sense of risk for the hero is maintained.
Yudkowski makes for a juicy target. For example /r/sneerclub has been around since 2015! The fact that the mainstream media has now identified him as a magnet for derision isn't surprising. No one has to know who he is. They just take one look at him, hear a couple of sentences from his mouth and they immediately form a strong opinion on his character.
> The mainstream interest only really picked up in the last half a year. But somehow he's in on it.
What do you mean "he's in on it"? I'm suggesting he is an unwitting participant. I have no doubt he actually believes he is the main character. He doesn't lack the ego for that.
FWIW, even though I personally really dislike Yudkowski as a person - I believe he has some interesting points to make. And frankly, it bugs me that he is so often dismissed without deep engagement with his arguments. But he is so lacking in media training and social skills that he is easily misdirected to look like the exact foolish/cartoonish caricature the media wants. Even in friendly podcast situations he comes off as unhinged.
And I honestly believe that boosting the signal of characters like Yudkowski is part of the mainstream establishments playbook for dealing with dissent. In comparison, Sam Altman's "aw shucks" performance in front of the senate, with favorable sound bites where he boyishly claims to have no financial stake in OpenAI, was positively wholesome.
Have you even read the article?
We don't have an AI safety problem, we have an human safety problem. Violent extremists are unsafe, greedy corporations seeking to suppress the free exploration and exercise of mathematics are unsafe. Existent language model chatbots are primarily just a public relations risk, at least so long as the government doesn't step in and create a monopoly that gives the market leaders choice of training biases the force of law.