The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

[ygolo]

Because of my own interests, location, proclivities and direction in life I came to very similar conclusions.

To be clear, part of the reason I find what is to follow so dangerous is because I was partially sucked in myself. I still find the allure of some of their arguments enticing. Unfortunately, the powers now have taken root in Europe and still has strong influence in the US, especially California. There's still strong control over funding and livelihood in the technology domain.

But the thing that makes it most insidious is that the movement outwardly frames itself as Left leaning, while covertly having a lot of right wing backing.

View of The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence | First Monday

firstmonday.org

This may feel like something only tied to AI. However, it's a lot deeper. SBF is not just an outlier.

@Siúil a Rúin came across elements of the TESCREAL bundle

Accelerationism and Longtermism

This is a new idea to me but it explains the choices of some of the billionaires. These two apparently opposite notions overlap more than you would think on the surface. I’m not promoting the ideas but think this explains a lot of the choices we are seeing from people like Musk. These topics are...

www.typologycentral.com

I saw elements of it:

Openness needed for AI Safety, the battle for the future of AI

For the smaller groups, communities, and individuals who would not want cronyism to take root in a technology that could be "more transformative than electricity": https://open.mozilla.org/letter/

www.typologycentral.com

TESCREAL makes for strange bed fellows. Why did Elon Musk and Scott Wiener agree on CA SB 1047? --The TESCREAL bundle.

This event lead to losing my mind for a bit:

Meet the California Bill that could loose the Election for Kamala Harris

Note, first that there are hundreds if not thousands of local bills in the USA regulating AI create a hodge-podge mess for anyone to deal with. California alone has thirty eight to deal that many Newsom has already signed into law. Dealing with that mess is for another time. There are so many...

www.typologycentral.com

A lot of my other threads that may seem weirdly motivated, ultimately comes from the perceived danger of the TESCREAL bundle.

On the surface, it may seem like it's just about AI or technology. But it's deeper. It's pervasive. It outwardly presents itself on the Left (e.g. Vox's Future Perfect and the recruiting of journalists, regulators, and even celebrities to the TESCREAL bundle cause.)

Ultimately, TESCREAL is a Eugenesists program at it core. But it's dressed up in language and reasoning that appeals on the surface to many who would naturally lean to the left. I was partially pulled into it. I am genuinely afraid entire continents are also getting pulled in.

 

[ygolo]

There are a lot of bad clusters of thought in the TESCREAL bundle.

BTW, those who sign onto the reality of "AGI" and "resist" are in many ways adding to the problems there. Probably more so than the actual proponents of it.

When you see it as a reality, you will move towards draconian limits on more realistic, non-"digital god" uses of the technology.

"AGI" is a distortion of the whole conversation about the use of technology.

We can have much more grounded conversations about who should control it, who should own the means of production, who can participate in the building of it, and who can share in the benefits.

If you believe in "AGI" as a sole goal, instead of solving problems for people who are underserved.

New technology(unless under oligopolist capture that doesn't deliver cost savings to consumers) often makes things more affordable, which allows more people to afford the use of new capabilities.

I don't think people care so much about their latest phone or TV being amazing compared to 20 years ago at a fraction of the cost

However, with generative AI, the potential for this effect to take place in Healthcare, Higher Education, and other places that have had prices climb much faster than inflation is great. We are only seeing the beginning of it.

But the TESCREAL bundle --which I always just considered to be marketing hype around technology, distorts the whole conversation.

 

[Joshua7850]

I agree that TESCREAL and AGI are often overhyped topics. AGI shouldn't be the goal in itself – the real questions are: who controls this technology? Who has the right to benefit from it? I feel like discussions around it are often detached from reality, more like dreams of a "digital god" than actual plans. Do you think this approach to technology is too idealistic? Musk and other big names often fuel the hype, but it doesn't mean we have to buy into all that marketing. What do you think, is there room for a more balanced conversation here?

 

[ygolo]

I agree that TESCREAL and AGI are often overhyped topics. AGI shouldn't be the goal in itself – the real questions are: who controls this technology? Who has the right to benefit from it? I feel like discussions around it are often detached from reality, more like dreams of a "digital god" than actual plans. Do you think this approach to technology is too idealistic? Musk and other big names often fuel the hype, but it doesn't mean we have to buy into all that marketing. What do you think, is there room for a more balanced conversation here?

It's not even about being too idealistic. The distortion is weird.

Take hype, faux rationalism, eugenics(the subconscious source of the "idealism"), put them in a blender and you get this result.

The unfortunate thing is that the TESCREAL believing network has come to control the funding and the public narrative around technology.

 

[ygolo]

The Illusion of AGI and the Dawn of Post-Cognitive Humanity

Cognition is just one layer of the human experience, and as AI lifts the burden of thought, we may unlock deeper realms of creativity, intuition, and emotional depth.

www.psychologytoday.com

 

[ygolo]

Questions we really need to ask ourselves.

What's desirable? There are plenty of tasks that we have severe shortage of skills in. Automation of tasks in jobs with severe shortages seems desirable.

Will AI lead to superintelligence or just super-automation?

www.goldmansachs.com

 

[ygolo]

OpenAI Finally Admits It "We've Achieved AGI"

OpenAI claims to have achieved AGI with its 01 model. Discover what this means for AI, its challenges, and its potential impact on society.

www.geeky-gadgets.com

I've been using o1, (and o1 preview before that). I don't feel it as much more powerful than things that came before.

I suppose, depending on how you define "AGI," you could say it's been achieved?

I wonder how it does on the following benchmark:

ARC Prize

ARC Prize is a $1,000,000+ nonprofit, public competition to beat and open source a solution to the ARC-AGI benchmark.

arcprize.org

It still feels like a non-event.

We still need to solve the "alignment problem," which is real despite the Sci-Fi language a lot people use in the research sphere.