Was having a hard time deciding what to make of him, so was thinking if anyone here is familiar with his work. He seems like a legitimate figure in the field, going by the pedigree, tho also loved by EAs. I haven’t yet read his popular books, but I listened to the Reith lectures he gave a few years back and came away both compelled and... stupefied, as he was making some pretty wild conjectures about the inevitability of AGI and how thoroughly it’d transform our world (for instance, serious allusions to “happiness engineering”, i.e. you could have a “life architect” in a personalized AI that lets you plan your life decades out and also makes sure you remain a good boy). Note that these lectures are from 2021 and so before ChatGPT & the crypto bust cranked AI grifterism up to 11.
There was a particular moment in one lecture which I found revealing, where he explained that “AI” in the form of fossil energy corporations has already outwitted humanity for several decades, that there is really no hope nor anything we could do politically & that our climate fight is already lost anyway, hence “real” AI is similarly destined to come down no matter what and, unlike what many economists like to imagine, will also end up replacing most workers and increasing capital’s concentration of profits even further. So, I’m wondering how much this is rationalist fatalism/wet dreams and if anyone here is more deeply engaged with his work or the relevant fields, since it seemingly smacks of the EA worldview, but to give credit where it’s due, he also doesn’t come off as a crank like Yud.
The fossil fuel companies thing is a metaphor run wild. It makes some sense in its own context as a characterisation of the way economic ‘forces’ (or ‘capital’) are able to go on operating and eating everything no matter what human beings collectively try to do about it. It does not make sense when you transfer the metaphor over to a new domain by holding onto one word (for example: “machine”) and behaving as if it continues to mean the same thing in a new context.
It isn’t a parsimonious way of thinking, it’s a rhetorical move he’s making.