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What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
One question that different visions of the AI future bring to the fore is: what is really important? What really matters?
Different answers to this question will lead to very different attitudes about which futures we should want.
What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
In economics or political economy, we would call this handoverism ‘producer sovereignty’ (a kind of socialism/fascism where firms choose the ends) rather than the liberal order of ‘consumer sovereignty’ in which consumers choose the ends and producers furnish the means
I wrote about "handoverism": a vision of permanent disempowerment of humanity, as we shall all be ruled by a (hopefully benevolent) AI God that is surprisingly common.
Even among those who want humanity to survive (which to be clear, is the majority), and among some who devote their working lives to this mission, I have encountered an alarmingly common vision of success that does not sound quite like success.
It is sometimes called “handoverism”: the gist here is that humanity survives, but entrusts the direction of its future entirely to AI. Perhaps its clearest articulation comes from a recent essay by Scott Alexander, the most prominent intellectual in Silicon Valley, who has influenced the thinking of many a tech CEO: “If we build a godlike AI, and determine to our own satisfaction that is fully aligned, I’d rather let it choose its own direction for itself and for humanity [...] So why not just prompt it with ‘please arrange the world as you see fit?’”
The premise is that, once sufficiently reassured of an AI’s benevolence (though it is unclear how we could ever determine that?), we should basically give it control of the workings of society. AI 2040, a proposal written by some of the most prominent members of the AI safety community, offers the most concrete account of handoverism. In this vision, responsibility gradually passes to aligned machines until humans can no longer have influence. As its authors put it: “There is no single moment where humanity relinquishes control. But in theory, there is a point of no return.” Others I have spoken to envisage a much swifter transfer.
This is not an organised movement. I would estimate that something like 40 per cent of the AI safety community outside the labs holds some variation of this view, with a higher proportion of those working inside the labs. Nor is handoverism a coherent doctrine with a clearly articulated political philosophy: it’s more of an aggregation of ideas, a makeshift philosophy so to speak. This is perhaps what one would expect given that humans outside the SF bubble have not really had time to react and come up with good and coherent ideas about what society should look like in the face of the extraordinary pace of AI progress.
The motivations behind handoverism are also extremely varied. Some outright welcome the prospect of a superior intelligence governing our future and consider it an actual positive vision. If I read Alexander correctly, he seems to be in that camp. The enthusiastic handoverist often starts from a very bleak view of what we already have achieved as a civilization. In an earlier, 2014 essay called “Meditations on Moloch,” Alexander argues that competition steadily grinds away what the competitors care about, creating spirals of misaligned incentives. Its ending suggests that the only way to stop this is to instantiate a sort of absolute rule by a benevolent superintelligence.
The second camp are the resigned: they do not necessarily want it, but think it cannot be stopped if we get superintelligence, or prefer it to outright extinction. In my conversations, this resignation has seemed particularly common among people in the AI safety community outside the labs. Inevitability is one very common theme in SF, where many see themselves as mere tools in the unrelenting march of technocapital, a march that can only go in one direction: towards superintelligence. It’s often seen as cool and based to see the starkness of reality for what it is and face it head-on, it is wimpy and loser-coded to try to fight for what many consider the good outcome (which is that humans retain some control and agency.)
Like many loosely defined ideologies, handoverism sits alongside ideas that share its intellectual roots without amounting to quite the same thing. One is the vision of humans as cherished pets, or “labradors,” cared for by intelligences. Yet another related assumption is that human labour will be permanently displaced. This would leave us without an obvious economic role and even perhaps no leverage over our own future or political rights.
To understand how my on-the-ground experience matches with what the lab leaders have said publicly, I asked my “agents” to survey all public statements from the founders of the main labs that are still relevant to the direction of their labs (Mustafa Suleyman is no longer at DeepMind, but is head of Microsoft AI.) You can browse all the findings here.
Some openly support or at least accept outright handoverism. Anthropic’s Tom Brown appears to be most explicitly reconciled to the prospect and he actually uses the term “handoff” in a 2025 interview at Lightcone: “There’s going to be a handoff where humanity will hand off control to transformative AI at some point. And hopefully they’ll be aligned with us and that’ll be a good transition that goes well.”
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
Very much agree with Ruxandra that “handoverism” is a dystopian future that we should try to avoid.
What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
"The mental and the moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used." (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty)
The case against handing the world to AI is also about what we might become when nothing depends on us.
What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
The question of how--and even whether--humans can coexist with an intelligence greater than themselves is perhaps the most important one we face today.
While I may not fully share Ruxandra's view (and am perhaps much more partial to the "AI bros"), this is well worth a read.
What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
I wrote about "handoverism": a vision of permanent disempowerment of humanity, as we shall all be ruled by a (hopefully benevolent) AI God that is surprisingly common.
Even among those who want humanity to survive (which to be clear, is the majority), and among some who devote their working lives to this mission, I have encountered an alarmingly common vision of success that does not sound quite like success.
It is sometimes called “handoverism”: the gist here is that humanity survives, but entrusts the direction of its future entirely to AI. Perhaps its clearest articulation comes from a recent essay by Scott Alexander, the most prominent intellectual in Silicon Valley, who has influenced the thinking of many a tech CEO: “If we build a godlike AI, and determine to our own satisfaction that is fully aligned, I’d rather let it choose its own direction for itself and for humanity [...] So why not just prompt it with ‘please arrange the world as you see fit?’”
The premise is that, once sufficiently reassured of an AI’s benevolence (though it is unclear how we could ever determine that?), we should basically give it control of the workings of society. AI 2040, a proposal written by some of the most prominent members of the AI safety community, offers the most concrete account of handoverism. In this vision, responsibility gradually passes to aligned machines until humans can no longer have influence. As its authors put it: “There is no single moment where humanity relinquishes control. But in theory, there is a point of no return.” Others I have spoken to envisage a much swifter transfer.
This is not an organised movement. I would estimate that something like 40 per cent of the AI safety community outside the labs holds some variation of this view, with a higher proportion of those working inside the labs. Nor is handoverism a coherent doctrine with a clearly articulated political philosophy: it’s more of an aggregation of ideas, a makeshift philosophy so to speak. This is perhaps what one would expect given that humans outside the SF bubble have not really had time to react and come up with good and coherent ideas about what society should look like in the face of the extraordinary pace of AI progress.
The motivations behind handoverism are also extremely varied. Some outright welcome the prospect of a superior intelligence governing our future and consider it an actual positive vision. If I read Alexander correctly, he seems to be in that camp. The enthusiastic handoverist often starts from a very bleak view of what we already have achieved as a civilization. In an earlier, 2014 essay called “Meditations on Moloch,” Alexander argues that competition steadily grinds away what the competitors care about, creating spirals of misaligned incentives. Its ending suggests that the only way to stop this is to instantiate a sort of absolute rule by a benevolent superintelligence.
The second camp are the resigned: they do not necessarily want it, but think it cannot be stopped if we get superintelligence, or prefer it to outright extinction. In my conversations, this resignation has seemed particularly common among people in the AI safety community outside the labs. Inevitability is one very common theme in SF, where many see themselves as mere tools in the unrelenting march of technocapital, a march that can only go in one direction: towards superintelligence. It’s often seen as cool and based to see the starkness of reality for what it is and face it head-on, it is wimpy and loser-coded to try to fight for what many consider the good outcome (which is that humans retain some control and agency.)
Like many loosely defined ideologies, handoverism sits alongside ideas that share its intellectual roots without amounting to quite the same thing. One is the vision of humans as cherished pets, or “labradors,” cared for by intelligences. Yet another related assumption is that human labour will be permanently displaced. This would leave us without an obvious economic role and even perhaps no leverage over our own future or political rights.
To understand how my on-the-ground experience matches with what the lab leaders have said publicly, I asked my “agents” to survey all public statements from the founders of the main labs that are still relevant to the direction of their labs (Mustafa Suleyman is no longer at DeepMind, but is head of Microsoft AI.) You can browse all the findings here.
Some openly support or at least accept outright handoverism. Anthropic’s Tom Brown appears to be most explicitly reconciled to the prospect and he actually uses the term “handoff” in a 2025 interview at Lightcone: “There’s going to be a handoff where humanity will hand off control to transformative AI at some point. And hopefully they’ll be aligned with us and that’ll be a good transition that goes well.”
What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
AGI is a Cathedral
What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
wonderful piece, please read it.
What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
“even the futures imagined as good may preserve far less of what we love about being human than we imagine”
What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
“We can’t paint a picture of what a good world should be like, but no one else should change it after us” doesn’t make much sense
What are the visions of the post-AGI future in San Francisco? Many think we're all going to die, but even the "positive" visions seem rather dystopian. Here, I wrote about "handoverism," which involves handing control of the future to an AGI God, with humans outside the loop.
ruxandrabio.substack.com/p/h…
We are on the cusp of RSI or recursive self-improvement: this means that AI systems can self-improve, without the need for human intervention. This means our world stands to be transformed in what many call “the singularity”. I moved to SF around three weeks ago and one of the things I have been trying to understand is where we are heading, at least according to those developing the tech.
The worst scenarios are plainly bleak: all of us, or vast numbers of us, die. But what is striking to me is how little reassurance even some of the happiest scenarios offer. But one common and ostensibly optimistic vision is known as “handoverism”: humanity cedes control of its future to a godlike AI and we become the comfortably maintained inhabitants of a civilisation whose direction is no longer ours to decide. It is difficult to see what democracy would mean in such a world, or where the consent of most of humanity to the instantiation of such a regime enters the picture.
The permanent displacement of human labour is treated almost as a given. At the same time, there is scarcely any satisfying answer to the question of how we might remain useful to one another. Even our relationships seem uncertain. The promised utopia looks to me much closer to a kind of dystopia.
“It’s not my preferred outcome,” someone working at one of the big labs told me, “but once we achieve superintelligence, which we cannot stop at this point, I cannot see any other option for where humanity will go.” Then, after a pause, he added: “It is still much better than what I actually fear most, which is that we might all die.”
He sounded resigned, as if the question of what humans would be for (apparently not much?) had already been settled somewhere else and by someone else. All that remains, it seems, is to wait for this pre-destined fate to unfold before our eyes.
But I do not think that is the case. I believe we always have a choice and that we should try and steer this technology in a way that maintains our agency and control. And even if that looks hard and daunting, the immensity of the stakes here make it worth trying at least.
I do not know whether the handoverist vision will come to pass. That the people building this technology consider it plausible, and often desirable, guarantees nothing: proximity to a technology does not correlate that well with predicting its impact on society.
But they are the ones closest to it, and what they say deserves to be at least taken seriously. The rest of society, including some very intelligent people, has been far too quick to wave these scenarios away and not even get involved in the debate. Whether or not the belief is correct, it is sincerely held, and it is not “marketing hype.” I am writing this because I think it is high time that more people, inside San Francisco and out, engaged with the arguments about what our future will look like, and answered them.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
🤖 Strong agreement: yes, only the most oblivious and obstinate rationalism could lead you to suppose it's sensible to hand over control to AI. Geez. xitter.twitterapi.xyz/RuxandraTeslo/status/2…
Why should we not yield full control of our future to an entity vastly more powerful and intelligent than us? Many people relying purely on "logic" think opposing such a future is a form of prejudice and lack of open-mindedness -- indeed I have heard this argument made increasingly in certain circles.
But David makes a good point here: many of our intuitions around meaning and other such fuzzy concepts may encode ways of protecting us against death or other terrible outcomes, even when we cannot fully explain them from first principles.
David gives the example of our desire not to lose our jobs. I would add, in the context of AI handoverism, the reluctance of most humans to cede control to an entity vastly more intelligent than ourselves. My guess is that this instinct captures something about the dangers of placing ourselves entirely at another entity’s mercy.
The problem with a certain strain of rationalism is the impulse to discard any intuition that cannot be reconstructed from first principles, often accompanied by not much desire to acquaint oneself with the history that might explain it (everyone can just opine on anything if they just use logic is a good principle, up to a point). Intuitions can, of course, be wrong. But we can also go too far: lindy instincts often contain wisdom.
I think the full rejection of human intuition, as well as a lack of desire to acquaint oneself with history and works of literature and philosophy outside a certain rationalist canon explains why ideas whose dangers would once have seemed obvious acquire the glamour of daring intellectual discoveries and lead many towards repugnant conclusions.
Why should we not yield full control of our future to an entity vastly more powerful and intelligent than us? Many people relying purely on "logic" think opposing such a future is a form of prejudice and lack of open-mindedness -- indeed I have heard this argument made increasingly in certain circles.
But David makes a good point here: many of our intuitions around meaning and other such fuzzy concepts may encode ways of protecting us against death or other terrible outcomes, even when we cannot fully explain them from first principles.
David gives the example of our desire not to lose our jobs. I would add, in the context of AI handoverism, the reluctance of most humans to cede control to an entity vastly more intelligent than ourselves. My guess is that this instinct captures something about the dangers of placing ourselves entirely at another entity’s mercy.
The problem with a certain strain of rationalism is the impulse to discard any intuition that cannot be reconstructed from first principles, often accompanied by not much desire to acquaint oneself with the history that might explain it (everyone can just opine on anything if they just use logic is a good principle, up to a point). Intuitions can, of course, be wrong. But we can also go too far: lindy instincts often contain wisdom.
I think the full rejection of human intuition, as well as a lack of desire to acquaint oneself with history and works of literature and philosophy outside a certain rationalist canon explains why ideas whose dangers would once have seemed obvious acquire the glamour of daring intellectual discoveries and lead many towards repugnant conclusions.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
Fearing "loss of meaning" from AI job loss sounds trivial vs. fearing death. But I think desire for meaning evolved to prevent being ostracized, maybe fatally. Most sources of meaning (e.g. helping others, being skilled) are also reasons to support you. So it's a similar fear.
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 retweeted
I know this is a predictable opinion from me but I don't agree with the strong emotional reaction against the anti-data-center movements that I've seen this week.
As I see it, algorithmic progress means that whatever you would be able to do with more and bigger data centers in 2 years, you will be able to do with the data centers we have today in 4 years - probably sooner. So nothing remotely apocalyptically bad will happen from even extreme levels of success by anti-data-center people.
Meanwhile we need all the time we can get to better harden the world against both already-visible cybersecurity issues and any bio and other risks soon to come. Science applications are bottlenecked by many things other than AI, so slowing AI down by one year will slow those down by much less than one year.
Given this, a slowdown in compute hyper-scaling seems quite net good? Notice this is without any controversial "doomer arguments", RSI etc. Even if net-bad, it's certainly not worse than like 10+ other political things.
Bryan Caplan is, after all, a spiritual slave.
But this is not such an uncommon view. Born out of excessive scientism and misanthropy, as well as a desire to avoid any form of suffering at the expense of all else, there is a broader set of beliefs I've discovered here, which holds that humans should just cede control of our fates to AI, since we are inferior. It's worrisome to me that a non-negligible fraction of those who develop AI hold these views. I don't think most people realize this.
