Transhumanist Nationalism and AI Politics

This perspective puzzled me for a moment. It puzzled me, not because Istvan is necessarily wrong, but because his concerns seem so irrelevant. For me, the sentence "superintelligence will belong to the US", takes a while to parse because it doesn't even type-check. Superintelligence will be enough of a game-changer that nations will mean something very different from what they do now, if they exist at all.

Istvan seems like someone modeling the Internet by thinking of a postal system, and then imagining it running really really fast.

Now, a more charitable reading would interpret his AI as some sort of superhuman but non-FOOMed tool AI, in which case his concerns make a bit more sense. But even in this case, this seems pretty much irrelevant. The US couldn't keep nuclear secrets from the Russians in the 50's, and this was before the Internet.

I believe the common opinion of Zoltan Istvan is that he's mostly interested in self-promotion, and so I am not surprised that he is emphasizing the more contentious possibilities.

Istvan appears to be treating the issue of AI largely in the same manner that US politicians treated the space race back in the 1960's: as a competition between nations to see who can do it "first". I think it should be obvious to most LW readers that such an attitude is... problematic.

What else do you expect a "US Presidential candidate" to say? Also, the guy appears to have more ego than smarts.

As usual, politics is the mind-killer, and being a member of the 'transhumanist' party does not make you exempt from this. I fail to immediately see why it is important which country superintelligence is first developed in, except empty nationalistic sentiments.

Everything we have learned from thinking about FAI is that the distinction between friendly/unfriendly AI goes far deeper than the intentions of its creators. The most moral person could wind up developing the most evil UFAI.

Now, to some extent I expect many Americans, on reflection, would at least partly agree with the above statement - and that should be concerning.

I agree.

My reaction to the first quoted statement was a big "Huh?". The only reason it would matter where superintelligent AI is first developed is that the researchers in different countries might do friendliness more or less well. A UFAI is equally catastrophic no matter who builds it; an AI that is otherwise friendly but has a preference for one country would . . . what would that even mean?Create eutopia and label it "The United Galaxy of America"? Only take the CEV of Americans instead of everybody? Either way, getting friendliness right means national politics is probably no longer an issue.

Also: I did not vote for this guy in the Transhumanist Party primaries!

I wouldn't trust USA with a super intelligence, after their conduct in Korea, in the nuclear attack on Japan and the bombardment of civilians in Vietnam and the blockade of Iraq in 1990s that killed over half a million. Not to forget the interference in 1970s and 1980s that installed a large number of military dictatorships, the support for the genocide of Bangladeshis by Pakistan in 1971 (USA nearly intervened to save the Islamist military dictatorship in war from the freedom fighters and secular democratic government of India).

What are dangerous things that a malign AI superintelligence can do, which a large enough group of humans with sufficient motivation cannot do? All the "horrible threats" listed are things that are well within the ability of large organizations that exist today. So why would an "AI superintelligence" able to execute those actions on its' own, or at the direction of its' human masters be more of a problem than the status quo?

I don't really trust America either, but our preferences don't matter much. It will be either an international consortium or America, Russia or others don't really have a big enough equivalet of the Valley for this.