Albert Camus broke with Jean-Paul Sartre and the French left over the most concrete political question there is: can the people alive today be treated as acceptable casualties in the pursuit of a better future?2
Sartre and the Marxists said yes. History has a direction. The revolution requires sacrifice. Camus said no. Any system of thought that subordinates living people to a hypothetical future has already committed the foundational moral error. Once you accept that logic, there is no limiting principle. Any atrocity becomes justifiable. Any amount of present suffering can be rationalized as a necessary input to the glorious output.
This is the structure of the AI acceleration argument. The technology will eventually benefit humanity (trillions of future humans, lives of abundance and meaning we can barely imagine), so present disruption is tolerable. Displaced workers, hollowed communities, the erosion of democratic leverage, the concentration of power in a handful of private actors who have exempted themselves from the consequences of their own project: regrettable but necessary. The expected value math works out.
[...]
Camus staked his intellectual legacy on the claim that the person standing in front of you is not an input to a utility function. Their suffering is not redeemed by a future state of affairs they may never see. Their dignity is not negotiable against projected outcomes. The person who exists now (who has a job they’re about to lose, a family they support, a community that depends on a functioning local economy) is the unit of account. Not humanity in the abstract. Not the trillions of future beings that the longtermists conjure to win their expected-value calculations.
Once that commitment is abandoned, the door opens to every form of rationalized cruelty that the twentieth century spent a hundred million lives trying to teach us to reject.
The entire AI acceleration project is premised on abandoning it. It asks present people to bear costs for future benefits they may never see, distributed to people who do not yet exist, administered by a self-appointed class that has insulated itself from the consequences entirely.
Yes it is very helpful to elaborate on concrete cases like these 50,000 in support of the larger analyses that are unfolding across these Substack posts.
I would also suggest that this does not require a “ban all AI” response. Just that an appropriate amount of, as you put it, “regulatory friction” is needed for this society to fulfill the Enlightenment dream toward which we are supposed to be striving.
That can’t happen if sci-fit robot villains like Marc Andreesen are allowed to call the shots.
Absolutely abhorrent how, in the amoral minds of tech investors, humans are secondary or tertiary to their profits, and how regulations and laws aren't there when AI comes in. The answer is: private investors again. NV Energy is a private, investor-owned utility holding company. Private capital is destroying the playing field for human beings on many fronts again. Utilities should never be privately owned and operated for profit; public services in general should never be in the hands of those where profits are above service. These utility companies were not designed to serve capital; they were designed to provide services to humans. The tech companies should be blocked from competing with humans for water, electricity, and other resources, including land: it should be mandatory that they build the infrastructure to feed their data centers, including renewing water supplies, using renewable energy sources, and more. We should have nationwide regulations in place on this matter. All the damage to our economy in the last few decades has been driven by private capital investments, from the high cost of housing (roughly 15% is owned by private capital investment firms) to the damaging data centers (tech private money). Data centers do not generate economic returns for anyone in the communities where they are built; they don't generate many local jobs once operating (they do have jobs while being built, more on that another time...), and they are heavy users of utilities. The only ones profiting from it are the investors. Again, private capital. There should be regulations on the level of investments these privately owned funds can do in matters of public interest, such as utilities, properties, communications, mail, and more to make sure humans, the 50,000 in Tahoe basin, do not face this type of amoral situation.
From a piece I wrote a few weeks back (https://www.owenmcgrann.com/p/the-dead-economy-theory), which seems relevant to your effective accelerationist bit:
Albert Camus broke with Jean-Paul Sartre and the French left over the most concrete political question there is: can the people alive today be treated as acceptable casualties in the pursuit of a better future?2
Sartre and the Marxists said yes. History has a direction. The revolution requires sacrifice. Camus said no. Any system of thought that subordinates living people to a hypothetical future has already committed the foundational moral error. Once you accept that logic, there is no limiting principle. Any atrocity becomes justifiable. Any amount of present suffering can be rationalized as a necessary input to the glorious output.
This is the structure of the AI acceleration argument. The technology will eventually benefit humanity (trillions of future humans, lives of abundance and meaning we can barely imagine), so present disruption is tolerable. Displaced workers, hollowed communities, the erosion of democratic leverage, the concentration of power in a handful of private actors who have exempted themselves from the consequences of their own project: regrettable but necessary. The expected value math works out.
[...]
Camus staked his intellectual legacy on the claim that the person standing in front of you is not an input to a utility function. Their suffering is not redeemed by a future state of affairs they may never see. Their dignity is not negotiable against projected outcomes. The person who exists now (who has a job they’re about to lose, a family they support, a community that depends on a functioning local economy) is the unit of account. Not humanity in the abstract. Not the trillions of future beings that the longtermists conjure to win their expected-value calculations.
Once that commitment is abandoned, the door opens to every form of rationalized cruelty that the twentieth century spent a hundred million lives trying to teach us to reject.
The entire AI acceleration project is premised on abandoning it. It asks present people to bear costs for future benefits they may never see, distributed to people who do not yet exist, administered by a self-appointed class that has insulated itself from the consequences entirely.
Excellent, Mike. So spot on! Thank you.
Yes it is very helpful to elaborate on concrete cases like these 50,000 in support of the larger analyses that are unfolding across these Substack posts.
Well since Andreessen bought into the site we are currently on, well over a year ago, perhaps some response will be forthcoming...
I would also suggest that this does not require a “ban all AI” response. Just that an appropriate amount of, as you put it, “regulatory friction” is needed for this society to fulfill the Enlightenment dream toward which we are supposed to be striving.
That can’t happen if sci-fit robot villains like Marc Andreesen are allowed to call the shots.
Absolutely abhorrent how, in the amoral minds of tech investors, humans are secondary or tertiary to their profits, and how regulations and laws aren't there when AI comes in. The answer is: private investors again. NV Energy is a private, investor-owned utility holding company. Private capital is destroying the playing field for human beings on many fronts again. Utilities should never be privately owned and operated for profit; public services in general should never be in the hands of those where profits are above service. These utility companies were not designed to serve capital; they were designed to provide services to humans. The tech companies should be blocked from competing with humans for water, electricity, and other resources, including land: it should be mandatory that they build the infrastructure to feed their data centers, including renewing water supplies, using renewable energy sources, and more. We should have nationwide regulations in place on this matter. All the damage to our economy in the last few decades has been driven by private capital investments, from the high cost of housing (roughly 15% is owned by private capital investment firms) to the damaging data centers (tech private money). Data centers do not generate economic returns for anyone in the communities where they are built; they don't generate many local jobs once operating (they do have jobs while being built, more on that another time...), and they are heavy users of utilities. The only ones profiting from it are the investors. Again, private capital. There should be regulations on the level of investments these privately owned funds can do in matters of public interest, such as utilities, properties, communications, mail, and more to make sure humans, the 50,000 in Tahoe basin, do not face this type of amoral situation.
Tell those billionaires to fuck off!
Here is some additional information about where they are going to go next when communities push back....this needs more attention
https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/the-great-data-center-swindle?r=e5iz9&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
Hey
Plaster their properties with solar!
Roofs: siding, fields,parking lots and new wind turbines with no blades!
It should be a requirement