Machine Metaphysics and the Cult of Techno-Transcendentalism

(Yogi)

I know there is too much talk about #AI at the moment.

But I've written a blog post, anyway, because I think I have something to add.
TechnoTranscendentalism and AGI as a religious cult, with a neo-feudalist political program.

TL;DR:

TechnoTranscendenalism is a pseudo-religious cult that stems from a strongly computationalist world view (the world is computation) and the TESCREAL movements (transhumanism, extropianism, singuaritarianism, cosmism, the rationality community, effective altruism, and longtermism).

It's popular among AI engineers, tech entrepreneurs, and tech nerds in general.

The article makes three simple points:

1. TechnoTranscendentalism resembles medieval Christianity strongly with its salvation narrative of the technological singularity, and its anti-democratic neo-feudalist politics.

2. TechnoTranscendentalism (and techno-optimism more generally) are based on the completely unsupported belief that physical processes actually constitute some kind of (Turing-)computation.

3. AI researchers like to accuse the general public of ignorance, but they themselves have absolutely no idea what the terms "agency," "thinking," "cognition," "intelligence," and "consciousness" mean and how they manifest in living systems. Neither do they know just how different organisms and algorithms are, and what that means for the development of AGI.

I conclude that the current moment in AI is truly dangerous for humanity, because of the deluded hubristic world view of the #AI community, their anti-democratic politics, and the massive amount of power they have amassed in recent times.

They need to be strictly regulated, urgently, held responsible for their actions, their business model made illegal, their insane ideology placed far outside our Overton window, and the massive external costs they cause must be internalized.

It is not AGI that is the problem here. Conscious machines are not a thing. We will *never* have true AGI (unless we construct new life in a lab).

It is narrow AI and those who produce it that are the true danger here.

Don't be fooled by their deluded ideology.

Don't be a serf in their neo-feudalist scheme.

Don't give your agency away to algorithms that have none.

That's the revolution in AI we need.

Are you with me?