Kevin Roose, This A.I. Subculture’s Motto: Go, Go, Go, NYTimes, Dec. 10, 2023.
Effective Accelerationism (often shortened to “e/acc,” pronounced “e-ack”) is a loosely organized movement devoted to the no-holds-barred pursuit of technological progress. The group believes that artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies should be allowed to move as fast as possible, with no guardrails or gatekeepers standing in the way of innovation.
The group formed on social media last year, and bonded in Twitter Spaces and group chats over memes, late-night conversations and shared scorn for the people they call “decels” and “doomers” — the people who worry about the safety of A.I., or the regulators who want to slow it down. It has moved offline, too, with parties and hackathons in the Bay Area and beyond.
Effective Accelerationism began as a cheeky response to an older, more established movement — Effective Altruism — that has become a major force in the A.I. world. E.A., as the older group is known, got its start promoting a data-driven approach to philanthropic giving, but in recent years has been worrying about A.I. safety, and promoting the idea that powerful A.I. could destroy humanity if left unrestrained.
While I'm not worried about Rogue AIs paper-clipping humankind because they can I am worried about putting powerful technology in the hands of bad actors, about over-concentration of AI tech in a few hands, and about over-commitment of resources to inadequate technologies, like the so-called foundation models (a fear I expressed at the end of my recent 3QD piece). I also worry about social disruption.
E/acc prefers the all-gas, no-brakes approach. Its adherents favor open-sourcing A.I. software rather than having it be controlled by big corporations, and unlike Effective Altruists, they don’t see powerful A.I. as something to be feared or guarded against. They believe that A.I.’s benefits far outweigh its harms, and that the right thing to do with such important technology is to get out of the way and let it rip.
I favor open-source for two reasons: 1) it allows a greater number and variety of people to test out and develop their ideas, and 2) it works against technological concentration. Though I'm not sure how effective that will be if the open-source LLMs are ultimately tethered back to a few foundation models owned by large corporations (e.g. Meta, Microsoft).
The article mentions Marc Andressen as e/acc and links to his techno-optimist, which I thought was a bit of agitprop on steroids, and so I had ChatGPT draft a counter-manifesto, who seemed to be channeling Goethe. It also linked to an e/acc manifesto, which I've not yet read. On the whole, I find the current situation too complex to game out.
As always, there's more at the link.
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