It promotes the idea of spending considerable state resources, i.e. tax payer money, for building massive computing clusters in the US, while at the same time denying the knowledge required to build AI models from non-American people and companies.
I’m Leopold Aschenbrenner. I recently founded an investment firm focused on AGI.
As you say, the whole set of writings has a propaganda (marketing) tone to it, and a somewhat naive worldview. And the temporal coincidence of the essays and the investment startup are likely not accidental. I’m surprised it got the attention it did given, as you say, the sort of red-flag writing style of which we are taught to be skeptical. Any presentation of these essays should be placed alongside the kind of systematic skepticism of eg Gary Marcus et al. for readers to draw their own conclusions.
Unfortunately, most of Aschenbrenner’s claims seem highly plausible. AGI is a huge deal, it could happen very soon, and the government is very likely to do something about it before it’s fully transformative. Whether them spending tons of money on his proposed manhattan project is the right move is highly debatable, and we should debate it.
Interesting juxtaposition:
With the following here:
As you say, the whole set of writings has a propaganda (marketing) tone to it, and a somewhat naive worldview. And the temporal coincidence of the essays and the investment startup are likely not accidental. I’m surprised it got the attention it did given, as you say, the sort of red-flag writing style of which we are taught to be skeptical. Any presentation of these essays should be placed alongside the kind of systematic skepticism of eg Gary Marcus et al. for readers to draw their own conclusions.
Agreed. That juxtaposition is quite suspicious.
Unfortunately, most of Aschenbrenner’s claims seem highly plausible. AGI is a huge deal, it could happen very soon, and the government is very likely to do something about it before it’s fully transformative. Whether them spending tons of money on his proposed manhattan project is the right move is highly debatable, and we should debate it.