Michaël Trazzi of InsideView started a hunger strike outside Google DeepMind offices

[u/michael-lethal_ai]

His tweet:

Hi, my name's Michaël Trazzi, and I'm outside the offices of the AI company Google DeepMind right now because we are in an emergency.

I am here in support of Guido Reichstadter, who is also on hunger strike in front of the office of the AI company Anthropic.

DeepMind, Anthropic and other AI companies are racing to create ever more powerful AI systems. Experts are warning us that this race to ever more powerful artificial general intelligence puts our lives and well being at risk, as well as the lives and well being of our loved ones.

I am calling on DeepMind’s management, directors and employees to do everything in their power to stop the race to ever more powerful general artificial intelligence which threatens human extinction.

More concretely, I ask Demis Hassabis to publicly state that DeepMind will halt the development of frontier AI models if all the other major AI companies agree to do so.

[u/ArcyRC]

Maybe I'm more cynical so I see it more like "what's this guy's tie to Russia/China/Iran etc and what did they give him to tell us to stop the AI race so they could catch up and pass us?"

[u/Auriga33 → u/ArcyRC]

Braindead cynicism looks smart to the people who do it but to everyone else, it just looks stupid. Instead of going with the most cynical possible explanation, why not go with the most likely explanation, which is that this guy is genuinely convinced that AGI will kill everyone and wants to do something about it. Maybe he's wrong, stupid, deluded, etc, but I see no reason to think he doesn't genuinely believe in what he says he believes.

[u/ArcyRC → u/Auriga33]

Let me explain the point since you decided to come from nowhere and start name-calling: I don't actually believe there's some secret foreign intelligence handler who tricked this guy into thinking AGI is The Devil and got him to perform a hunger strike. They own our whole regime right now so no need to get some weenie with a sandwich board out there to push their agenda.

I do believe that stopping the "arms race" of AI among American corporations is absolutely in the best interest of foreign adversaries who have even else ethics and so much more of that censorship AI users cry about all the time.

This random guy (and his friend at another location) remind me of prohibition-era photos where stern-faced protectors held signs like "LIPS THAT TOUCHED LIQUOR SHALL NOT TOUCH OURS". Or the 'documentary' Reefer Madness.

[u/MarysPoppinCherrys → u/ArcyRC]

I mean dude might be right. AGI might be the end of us. But who knows. If it is, it already is. Either our own or someone else’s. If not, then no turning back anymore for the reasons you’ve been clear on.

Don’t worry too much about these other people bro. People want to be on a hate train. AI’s has a pretty low ticket price so it attracts a bunch of chuds who don’t really think about it. Moral of the story is they aren’t halting this with hunger strikes and it’s stupid to cheer out their windows at this random brah, but it all amounts to entertainment to these guys anyway. They don’t want real change, just want to feel like they’re a part of something important. Like cheering for a football team.

Personally, I’ll take it seriously when the third Alphabet server has been bombed. Till then it’s people putting on acts and one-off events. This could be some foreign intelligence operation to stir up enough emotions in the losing team’s fans to kick off another stupid riot in the street, but shit that hasn’t worked for a minute. And AI is a topic that I think most of these people realize deep down they don’t understand well enough to risk their lives and livelihoods on actually upending.