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Comment by yowayb | Hacker News Reader

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yowayb·

I've thought the same about a few of my founders/executives.

"You either die the good guy or live long enough to become the bad guy"

The "bad guy" actually learns that their former good guy mentality was too simplistic.

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I have hit points in this in my career where making a moral stand would be harmful to me (for minor things, nothing as serious as this). It's a very tempting and incentivized decision to make to choose personal gain over ideal. Idealists usually hold strong until they can convince themselves a greater good is served by breaking their ideals. These types that succumb to that reasoning usually ironically ending up doing the most harm.

Ever since I first bothered to meditate on it, about 15 years ago, I've believed that if AI ever gets anywhere near as good as it's creators want it to be, then it will be coopted by thugs. It didn't feel like a bold prediction to make at the time. It still doesn't.

Yes. There will always be people who see opportunity in using it destructively. Best case scenario is that others will use it to counter that. But it is usually easier to destroy than to protect. So we could have a constant AI war going on somewhere in the clouds, occasionally leaking new disasters into the human world.

I keep hearing this word "progress". We've been stuck here on earth for 1.5 billion years, we're not progressing, we haven't gone anywhere. We're not going anywhere. There is nowhere better for lightyears in any direction. Don't delude yourself with that narcissistic bunk and don't play with fire.

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