AI Doomlord Jacob Coxon's Media Tour Has Begun

AI Doomlord Jacob Coxon's Media Tour Has Begun(gizmodo.com)

23 points by jjj123 26 days ago | 18 comments

“What are the odds that the first three quote tweets of Coxon’s post would all be major AI-restriction policy advocates funded generously by the same donor, who also happens to be one of the leading investors in, and a board member of, Anthropic, the company Coxon was resigning from? And all within 15 minutes of posting (two within ten)?”

https://x.com/parkerthayer/status/2097759699626328575

almostdeadguy 26 days ago | |

This is more of the same "all AI opposition is a psyop" bs we see with data centers, and the author of this tweet works at a think tank consistently peddling that: https://capitalresearch.org/tag/ai/. Quote tweeting someone within 15 minutes of their cry for help is not evidence of psyop.

adventured 26 days ago | | |

The cultural fervor they're groundswelling isn't a psyop. That part is already out of their control. It's an enormous mistake. Maybe once they've accomplished market capture via regulation they won't care that it's a mistake, however the consequences will be pretty bad in what they rile up.

Jblx2 26 days ago |

Kind of odd that I haven't seen him mentioned in any of these discussions. How does Ted Kaczynski fit into all of this?

  * He was correct
  * He was wrong
  * He was correct, but for the wrong reasons
  * He was correct, but too extreme 
  * He was correct, and not extreme enough
  * He was correct, but too early
  * He was correct, but unpleasant as a person 
  * I haven't read the manifesto, but I have strong opinions anyway
  * Ted who?

Scottn1 26 days ago | |

>>>How does Ted Kaczynski fit into all of this?

You mean Jacques Ellul? Ted Kaczynski was heavily influenced by little known French Philosopher / Anarchist Ellul's anti-technology books. Ted even mentioned this to his prison interviewer. Here is a copy of Ted's 1983 letter to Ellul:

https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-s-lette...

Ted always seems to get the recognition for being the main, or original, anti-technologist who "foresaw" our modern predicament because he killed people to make enough noise to get his manifesto published. Ellul and many others were before him.

The Netflix documentary on Ted Kaczynski is real good.

ButlerianJihad 26 days ago | |

  * He wasn't wrong

hippycruncher22 26 days ago |

This guy is part of an ai policy think tank. This is all staged.

orbital-decay 26 days ago | |

Sure but he's pretty successful at creating a moral panic. Without a proper response people like him will succeed at a lot more than that. What are you going to do about it, besides commenting?

kg 26 days ago |

The Anthropic employee quoted in the article is doing a great job of saying things that no PR/communications department would ever, ever want an employee to say:

> Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.

transcriptase 26 days ago | |

The goal isn’t positive PR. It’s to have governments take note and come down hard on Anthropic and OpenAI with regulations that they’ll ultimately have a hand in writing or providing testimony for.

Those regulations will ever so coincidentally make it difficult for anyone else to get as big as they are, and demonize open weights, Chinese AI, abliteration, etc

ButlerianJihad 26 days ago | | |

> abliteration

OK, so I looked up this word, and TIL.

In the Infocom game, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Arthur Dent struggles with two inventory items, which are named "no tea" and "tea". He (you) has suffered through the entire game carrying "no tea", but when you finally find real tea, the interpreter refuses to hold both at once, which becomes problematic.

So eventually you enter a maze, and discover that it is your own brain, wherein is contained a small black particle labelled "COMMON SENSE" and, it turns out that the object is to dislodge and discard that common sense from your brain.

Then, upon exiting back into normal space, you/Arthur can pick up tea and also "no tea" and hold both in your inventory at once, having successfully abliterated your guardrails against nonsense.

almostdeadguy 26 days ago | | |

Which upstarts are the frontier labs threatened by except for each other? The "regulatory capture" arguments make zero sense. Especially since their lobbying arms are trying to reject any kind of regulation: https://x.com/AlexBores/status/2097846545408262403

jordemort 26 days ago |

Anthropic's marketing department is so creative

tao_oat 26 days ago | |

This is all consistent with the beliefs of many AI (and EA) types who are not associated with the company.

almostdeadguy 26 days ago |

> We at Gizmodo were gobsmacked by the sheer size of the reaction to Coxon’s not-at-all breaking news. As Coxon himself acknowledged, he wasn’t revealing any hidden secrets about the beliefs of AI’s industry leaders.

Are we supposed to be comforted by this?

* He was correct * He was wrong * He was correct, but for the wrong reasons * He was correct, but too extreme * He was correct, and not extreme enough * He was correct, but too early * He was correct, but unpleasant as a person * I haven't read the manifesto, but I have strong opinions anyway * Ted who?