I’m curious what you think of Geoffrey Hinton’s recent comments during his interview with Jon Stewart, where he said that in a recent trip to China, he met with a member of the Politburo and found that this person was very serious about the concerns of AI safety and AI takeover and that Hinton felt that China was more likely to do things about it than the U.S.
Also, while it’s definitely true that China hasn’t embraced most western liberal values like multiparty democracy, rule of law, and human rights, you can debate some of the finer points and argue that, for instance, the Marxist intellectual tradition is western in origin, and that China’s alternative to western liberalism is a strange mixture of Marxism and Confucianism.
And, it might be noted regarding ethnic minorities that while separatism is severely punished, minorities that conform to the existing system are often rewarded with, for instance, extra points on the university entrance examination system (Gaokao), as a form of affirmative action.
Back to moral philosophy, the nature of Chinese moral philosophy seems to be more practical than analytical. Probably the most analytical moral philosophy to come out of China was Mohism, which considering how much it predates it, is very, very similar to Utilitarianism in being an overall consequentialist framework with an emphasis on human equality and the greatest good. Interestingly, some of the CCP literature in the past has tried to emphasize Mohism as some kind of forerunner to modern Marxism.
In terms of the future going well, I think the strongest argument for a CCP aligned AGI being beneficial would be that some kind of post-scarcity communism is likely to achieve more human flourishing than the techno-feudalism that western capitalism could potentially devolve into with the AGI company leaders owning everything and the rest of us surviving on basic income that exists at the whim of these AGI owners.
The CCP, for all its faults, is nominally still a communist party, and so is more likely to, given an actual chance to succeed at it, introduce post-scarcity communism that spreads the benefits of AGI in a generally egalitarian way. Though, obviously a possible failure state is that the party instead monopolizes AGI’s benefits and we still get techno-feudalism, albeit state-run instead of private.
As for the lack of charitable donations, there are probably a number of reasons for this. Certain scandals involving the Red Cross have in the past made people weary of donating. And, probably more significantly, Chinese cultural expectations mean that a lot of what would be charitable work in the west is expected to be done by either family or the government. I personally have tried to convince some Chinese nationals to donate to, for instance, AMF, and their response is usually along the lines of this being the local government’s responsibility. There is definitely a strain of collectivism in China that contrasts with the individualism of western liberal democracies.
So, I think, a CCP led AI future would probably be notably different than a western led one, but I’m unclear on whether this would actually be that much worse. At the end of the day, both would, ideally, be led by humans and human-aligned ASI.
Interesting, I hadn’t seen that interview. I stand by the overall claim that AI safety is more prominent in the West than China, though I am glad to see more people in China becoming safety-oriented.
Re the CCP being more redistributionist: that could be the case, but I am also worried that once individuals aren’t economically useful their interests won’t be looked out for as much by the state, unless they stay politically empowered, which requires democracy. I think the CCP would still care enough about its people to distribute AI benefits to them even when the people aren’t useful investments, but I’m unsure. Whereas I think I would be more surprised if e.g. the US let its people be greatly deprived even if they were ~useless deadweights.
I’m curious what you think of Geoffrey Hinton’s recent comments during his interview with Jon Stewart, where he said that in a recent trip to China, he met with a member of the Politburo and found that this person was very serious about the concerns of AI safety and AI takeover and that Hinton felt that China was more likely to do things about it than the U.S.
Also, while it’s definitely true that China hasn’t embraced most western liberal values like multiparty democracy, rule of law, and human rights, you can debate some of the finer points and argue that, for instance, the Marxist intellectual tradition is western in origin, and that China’s alternative to western liberalism is a strange mixture of Marxism and Confucianism.
And, it might be noted regarding ethnic minorities that while separatism is severely punished, minorities that conform to the existing system are often rewarded with, for instance, extra points on the university entrance examination system (Gaokao), as a form of affirmative action.
Back to moral philosophy, the nature of Chinese moral philosophy seems to be more practical than analytical. Probably the most analytical moral philosophy to come out of China was Mohism, which considering how much it predates it, is very, very similar to Utilitarianism in being an overall consequentialist framework with an emphasis on human equality and the greatest good. Interestingly, some of the CCP literature in the past has tried to emphasize Mohism as some kind of forerunner to modern Marxism.
In terms of the future going well, I think the strongest argument for a CCP aligned AGI being beneficial would be that some kind of post-scarcity communism is likely to achieve more human flourishing than the techno-feudalism that western capitalism could potentially devolve into with the AGI company leaders owning everything and the rest of us surviving on basic income that exists at the whim of these AGI owners.
The CCP, for all its faults, is nominally still a communist party, and so is more likely to, given an actual chance to succeed at it, introduce post-scarcity communism that spreads the benefits of AGI in a generally egalitarian way. Though, obviously a possible failure state is that the party instead monopolizes AGI’s benefits and we still get techno-feudalism, albeit state-run instead of private.
Also, while China ranks in the middle on the World Happiness Report, it actually ranked highest on the IPSOS Global Happiness Report from 2023, which was the last year that China was included in the survey.
As for the lack of charitable donations, there are probably a number of reasons for this. Certain scandals involving the Red Cross have in the past made people weary of donating. And, probably more significantly, Chinese cultural expectations mean that a lot of what would be charitable work in the west is expected to be done by either family or the government. I personally have tried to convince some Chinese nationals to donate to, for instance, AMF, and their response is usually along the lines of this being the local government’s responsibility. There is definitely a strain of collectivism in China that contrasts with the individualism of western liberal democracies.
So, I think, a CCP led AI future would probably be notably different than a western led one, but I’m unclear on whether this would actually be that much worse. At the end of the day, both would, ideally, be led by humans and human-aligned ASI.
Interesting, I hadn’t seen that interview. I stand by the overall claim that AI safety is more prominent in the West than China, though I am glad to see more people in China becoming safety-oriented.
Re the CCP being more redistributionist: that could be the case, but I am also worried that once individuals aren’t economically useful their interests won’t be looked out for as much by the state, unless they stay politically empowered, which requires democracy. I think the CCP would still care enough about its people to distribute AI benefits to them even when the people aren’t useful investments, but I’m unsure. Whereas I think I would be more surprised if e.g. the US let its people be greatly deprived even if they were ~useless deadweights.