[LINK] Terrorists target AI researchers

DO NOT USE YOUR REGULAR IDENTITY TO SAY ANYTHING TRULY INTERESTING ON THIS THREAD, OR ON THIS TOPIC, UNLESS YOU HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT IT FOR FIVE MINUTES.

I remarked elsewhere that, if someone media-savvy could use this to show the USA's voters that the terrorists hate our Science as well as our freedoms, we might get all manner of space telescopes and stem cell therapies funded.

A while back, I claimed the Less Wrong username Quirinus Quirrell, and started hosting a long-running, approximate simulation of him in my brain. I have mostly used the account trivially - to play around with crypto-novelties, say mildly offensive things I wouldn't otherwise, and poke fun at Clippy. Several times I have doubted the wisdom of hosting such a simulation. Quirrell's values are not my own, and the plans that he generates (which I have never followed) are mostly bad when viewed in terms of my values. However, I have chosen to keep this occasional alter-identity, because he sees things that would otherwise be invisible to me.

Tor and a virtual machine sandbox are strongly recommended for following all links in this comment. Malware is highly probable and intelligence agencies take notice.

All of the primary source documents from this group are in Spanish. The blog "War on Society" has a translation of one of ITS's manifestos here, plus links to an earlier manifesto, a photo of one of the assembled package bombs, and the original publication in Spanish on the blog Liberacion Total here. Liberacion Total has been accused of being affiliated with ITS for publishing the manifesto, but they put up a notice saying they merely received it by mail. A few interesting observations:

• The basic thesis of ITS's writing is "technology is bad". It shuffles between talking about different types of technology and different ways, bringing up gray goo, artificial intelligence, animal testing, and environmental contamination.
• It is focused almost exclusively on Mexico and Mexican universities.
• The original documents replace o/a->x in many words. I saw this in "lxs cientificxs" ("the scientists") several times, and thought it was meant to be threatening; but on further inspection, I think this is more like those novelty gender-neutral pronouns ("ey") you sometimes see in English. If you want to use automated translation, you will have to undo this first.
• The blogs War on Society, Liberacion Total and culmine appear to be sympathetic.
• There are names of specific people and organizations in those documents. Those people should take notice (and probably already have).

SingInst gets one mention on this page, in the middle of some ranting about Facebook being a mind-control tool.

Siguiendo con el tema de la informática, las famosas redes sociales y específicamente una que es Facebook se ha convertido en el centro de atención de la sociedad tecnoindustrial, pues en ella el sistema ve un aliado importante para el total control del comportamiento humano, que es en si, un factor sumamente amenazante para el orden establecido dentro de la Civilización.

Uno de los tres líderes de Facebook es Peter Thiel, un empresario estadounidense quien se ha propuesto la eliminación total del mundo real o natural y la imposición del mundo digital, así como se oye lo ha dicho. Analizando esto, podemos ver que Facebook no es una simple red comunicacional inofensiva, sino que es un experimento social de control mental que el Sistema Tecnológico Industrialestá usando con gran efectividad para excluir a la Naturaleza del contacto humano, es decir, desarrolla en gran medida la alienación total de lxs individuos a la Tecnología.

Pero este empresario pervertido no se ha quedado quieto, además de ser uno de lxs principales contribuyentes de la mencionada herramienta de control mental, ha invertido millonarias ganancias en investigación de inteligencia artificial y nuevas tecnologías capaces de alargar la vida del hombre por medio de la ciencia. Para esto tiene de aliado al Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence y al inglés gerontólogo biomédico Aubrey de Grey, quien se encarga específicamente en desarrollar por medio de una tecnología altamente avanzada que el periodo de vida de un ser humano se alargue de manera indefinida, y así, el humano hecho maquina ha sido creado!

Which Google translates to:

Continuing the theme of IT, the famous social networking and specifically one that is Facebook has become the focus of techno-industrial society, for in it the system is an important ally for the total control of human behavior, which is itself, a factor extremely threatening to the established order in Civilization. One of the three leaders of Facebook is Peter Thiel, an American businessman who has proposed the complete elimination of real or natural world and the imposition of the digital world and hear what he said.

Analyzing this, we see that Facebook is not just a harmless communication network, but a social experiment in mind control that the System of Industrial Technology are using very effectively to exclude the nature of human contact, that is largely developed total alienation of individuals to Technology.

But this perverted businessman has not stood still, and is one of the main contributors of that mind-control tool, has invested millions in profits in artificial intelligence research and new technologies to extend the life of man through science. For this is an ally to Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and biomedical gerontologist English Aubrey de Grey, who is specifically responsible to develop through a highly advanced technology that the lifetime of a human being lengthened indefinitely, and so The man made machine has been created!

There are some clues in there that could be useful for figuring out who this is. I'm not sure how uncommon the 'x' thing is, but it's probably in his real-name writings too, and it's easy to search for. His rantings about Facebook indicate he probably had an account at one point but abandoned it. On priors, he's almost certainly a loner, and the same rant seems to back that up. His understanding of technology seems pretty shallow, which means the manifestos might've been sent through insufficiently-anonymized means (though Liberacion Total probably isn't keen on helping unmask him).

The group praises Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, whose anti-technology crusade in the United States in 1978–95 killed three people and injured many others.

More than that, he specifically targeted CS researchers like Gelernter.

 hmm, is there a collection of the history of terrorist attacks related to AI?

(Since the linked article doesn't at a first glance talk about AI researchers, the title should be justified.)

On the other hand, the mission of the SIAI is founded on the belief that if anyone succeeds at AGI without solving the Friendliness problem, they will destroy the world. Eliezer has said in an interview a year or two back that he does not think that anyone currently working on AGI has any chance of succeeding. But if not now, then some day the question will have to be faced:

What do you do if you really believe that someone's research has a substantial chance of destroying the world?

Screaming and bleeding and gnashing of teeth; little AI researchers can't fall asleep ; )

Screaming and bleeding and gnashing of teeth; little AI researchers can't fall asleep : )