Peter Thiel believes the Antichrist is “someone like” this AI-funded killer

The silence on Peter Thiel’s bizarre lectures on the Antichrist has been broken, and we’re finally getting some details on how it all goes down. Some people found the lectures intense. Others seem to have done so I found it to be long lasting And “zigzag”. Now, The Washington Post has obtained an audio recording of the entire series, and it’s giving the world a peek inside the stormy mind of the Godfather of the PayPal Mafia.

mail He notices itDuring his lectures, Thiel focused specifically on people critical of technology as potential candidates to be revealed as the next Dark Lord that his closed-door lectures focused on. In one section of his talks, the billionaire pointed the finger at a well-known left-wing activist, as well as a prominent AI pessimist.

“In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Antichrist was Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this kind of evil mad science,” Thiel said in his opening remarks on Sept. 15, according to the recordings. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is one of the luminaries who wants to stop all science. He’s someone like Greta or Eliezer,” Thiel apparently said.

It was previously known that Thiel had It casts Thunberg as an archetype of evilbut this appears to be the first time that “someone like” Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the leading AI “convicts,” has been similarly accused of having similar good intentions.

For years, Yudkowski has warned of the dangers of developing artificial intelligence from within his Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a private nonprofit in Berkeley that has published research on technological advances and their risks.

Thiel’s accusation against Yudkowski is laughable because Thiel is at least partly responsible for Yudkowski’s career. actually, Excerpt from The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Futurea new book about the AI ​​industry, claims that two decades ago, billionaire Palantir helped an AI convict get his start in AI research. Notes:

In 2005, Thiel began funding the Yudkowsky Singularity Institute, and the following year they collaborated with Ray Kurzweil – whose book The singularity is near It became a bestseller — to create the Summit of Exclusivity at Stanford University. Over the next six years, it expanded into a prominent forum for futurists, transhumanists, extropists, artificial intelligence researchers, and science fiction authors…

Yudkowsky has since become one of the best-known critics of AI development, so perhaps he and Thiel — who these days might more appropriately be described as “accelerationist” — don’t quite see eye to eye anymore. In fact, Yudkowski is currently promoting his new book about artificial intelligence, If anyone built it, everyone would dieits title is As Deadly as Possible , and it’s been saying essentially the same thing for decades. He also recently Screed books in Atlantic“, where he said that humanity should “put a simple stop to the race to superintelligence through an international treaty, reining in all companies at once,” while adding that “current technology (artificial intelligence) does not provide anyone with enough control over how intelligent AI emerges.”

Yudkowski depicts artificial intelligence as an unstoppable force with a will of its own—a kind of Frankensteinian monster that can grow beyond human control. It should be noted that this is a somewhat more melodramatic interpretation than the one shared by other AI critics. In fact, less representative skeptics prefer to see AI through “Random parrots“The model – which he describes as nothing more than an advanced form of autocorrection with no intelligence or decision-making capacity per se. Critics, such as Timnit Gebru, for example, have focused more on the risks associated with the enormous cost of artificial intelligence, as well as its harmful environmental impact, and its ability to crowd out investment in other forms of technological development that might be more beneficial.”

In any case, Yudkowsky is one of the world’s most important AI abusers, and if he – or someone like him – ends up becoming the Antichrist, it seems Thiel has no one to blame but himself. Thiel’s visions of the end of the world and the person who will precipitate it seem—predictably—self-serving. An evil person incarnate would necessarily threaten Thiel’s business interests, he said. And at the same time, the realities of Thiel’s existence in the world, and how well he fits into it Traditional conditions that will bring the AntichristA billionaire defense contractor who helps the American deep state monitor, classify and oppress populations at home while helping to wage wars abroad appears to have lost his way.