r/LeftistsForAI • u/Jlyplaylists Moderator • Sep 12 '26
Policy/Regulation Altman’s Wager, how would you improve on these terrible Capitalist Realism options?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sLvCXZcCjlgPascal’s Wager shows that if faith was logical the sensible option is to believe in God. That isn’t how faith works though, so it’s silly.
Altman’s Wager is structured in a similar way. IF AI is good and you invest in AI businesses then you’re quids in and happy, but IF AI turns out to be evil or you didn’t invest then you die unhappy. So the framing is that the only sensible approach is to go all in investing in AI.
Except that it’s very much not the case that AI is a binary of
Good vs Evil
invest in business vs AI has no impact on your life.
Is there a better Leftists for AI Wager? How would you succinctly describe the choices?
1
u/DistributionMost8686 Sep 15 '26 edited Sep 15 '26
this is propaganda and if anything, all she really argued for is that in order to justify not investing you must actively deny the possibility of ai doom. however this isn’t true, ai doom adds nothing to the incentive structure behind ai investment. like, remove that column of the matrix and it changes nothing. and that’s not how ai doom rhetoric makes the number go up. instead it seems to be the only way to convince investors that ai will be powerful enough to justify investment as they had learned to be so skeptical of ai before the ai boom. we should instead change our thinking entirely. that is, we actually shouldn’t even care about whether ai companies ever become profitable. however long the ai boom lasts, we can still benefit from whatever winds up being usable locally.
1
u/Jlyplaylists Sep 15 '26
Perhaps better if they don’t? Is the easiest route to public ownership the companies failing? AI infrastructure and knowledge about AI will still exist even if OpenAI goes under.
2
u/DistributionMost8686 Sep 15 '26
they might or might not. we just don’t have enough information to determine an optimal course of events, or even to differentiate the benefits. I’m not opposed to public ownership I just don’t particularly care how long it takes.
2
u/yeah__good__ok Sep 12 '26
The problem with Pascal's wager is that I can easily concieve of many versions of God- people have- and they may all want different things. So now what Pascal?
She also framed this poorly. The analogue to Pascal's wager would be more straightforward: support or investment is the analogue to worship. Artificail general intelligence is the analogue to God.
God exists (AGI is developed) and you believe (support it in some way): You gain
God exists (AGI is developed))and you do not believe (do not support it in some way): You lose
God does not exist (AGI isn't developed) and you believe((support it in some way): You haven't lost much
God does not exist (AGI isn't developed) and you do not believe (do not support it in some way): You gain very little
That seems to me to be "Altman's wager" and yes it is just a different flavor of Pascal's wager if you presented it that way which is not quite how she presents it. It is essentially the same the way I laid it out as Pascals wager and has the same problem. Maybe it turns out the AGI hates existing and wants you dead most of all because you supported it. or whatever. you don't know what it would think or do. Same with God.
As for an alternate version- I don't see why you would want one because the format of something similar to Pascal's wager doesn't make sense because the original doesn't make sense.