I agree with a lot of what was said here. But the left needs to meaningfully confront the ideology behind the quest for AGI. TESCREAL has lots of eugenicist roots and the left needs to figure out what its outlook on the future of humanity and our species is.
Honestly the TESCREAL argument boils down to the same line of argument as “Planned Parenthood was founded by a eugenicist, therefore Planned Parenthood is eugenics,” which is not true. It’s also a cluster of ideologies with real disagreements with each other that makes “TESCREAL” a worse abstraction for understanding the tech industry than simply understanding these people’s relationship to capital. I respond to this in some detail here (https://open.substack.com/pub/onethousandmeans/p/the-ai-denial-industry-the-lefts?r=5yex5f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
With all due respect that analogy falls short. TESCREAL is about changing the very nature of humanity and our species. If we build a super intelligence it’s very likely that humanity as we know it will eventually end. These are real philosophical questions that we have to deal with and decide before we go off and rush to build something that can end humanity.
One of the core socialist contributions to this question is that decisions which imply a fundamental transformation of the human condition should be made with robust democratic input--and that is impossible if technocapital is concentrated in the hands of a few CEOs. I hope we can agree that working people need their hands on the wheel in the event of any great advance of artificially intelligent systems.
That I can agree with. But I think calling for the left to support the current race for AI (which is not in the hands of workers and is unlikely to be) is wrong .
Did I just stumble upon the "socialist rationalism" I have been seeking from those smarter than me for the last fifteen years? Let me read more – I like where this is going
I agree with a lot of what was said here. But the left needs to meaningfully confront the ideology behind the quest for AGI. TESCREAL has lots of eugenicist roots and the left needs to figure out what its outlook on the future of humanity and our species is.
Honestly the TESCREAL argument boils down to the same line of argument as “Planned Parenthood was founded by a eugenicist, therefore Planned Parenthood is eugenics,” which is not true. It’s also a cluster of ideologies with real disagreements with each other that makes “TESCREAL” a worse abstraction for understanding the tech industry than simply understanding these people’s relationship to capital. I respond to this in some detail here (https://open.substack.com/pub/onethousandmeans/p/the-ai-denial-industry-the-lefts?r=5yex5f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
With all due respect that analogy falls short. TESCREAL is about changing the very nature of humanity and our species. If we build a super intelligence it’s very likely that humanity as we know it will eventually end. These are real philosophical questions that we have to deal with and decide before we go off and rush to build something that can end humanity.
One of the core socialist contributions to this question is that decisions which imply a fundamental transformation of the human condition should be made with robust democratic input--and that is impossible if technocapital is concentrated in the hands of a few CEOs. I hope we can agree that working people need their hands on the wheel in the event of any great advance of artificially intelligent systems.
That I can agree with. But I think calling for the left to support the current race for AI (which is not in the hands of workers and is unlikely to be) is wrong .
Fantastic work!
Did I just stumble upon the "socialist rationalism" I have been seeking from those smarter than me for the last fifteen years? Let me read more – I like where this is going
This was a very interesting read Alexei, thank you.