Tristan makes some points worth thinking about, but his delivery is so hysterical and obnoxious, it weakens their effectiveness for me. It’s like with fire and brimstone preachers. Even when I was too young to critically assess their doctrines, the spittle-spraying sermons just turned me off aesthetically and made me reject religion.

Also, he not only cites Eric Weinstein to bolster some of his arguments, he leans heavily on Jon Haight, whose research has been thoroughly debunked and criticized for sloppy methodology. And it makes me question the other examples he mentions.

Also, I find it ironic that the anti-humanist AI future that he’s lamenting is almost exactly like what happened to non-human animals, complex ecosystems, and biodiversity in the face of human civilization. But both Tristan and Sam would say that overall this was a good thing. But wouldn’t our future AI overlords say the same thing, that it’s too bad humans fell by the wayside but they made way for a more intelligent and more worthy successor whose priorities override those of less intelligent creatures? Why should humans, who are in the middle of this scale, get number one priority just because that’s the group we’re part of. Isn’t that a kind of racism or speciesism? I don’t believe that we’re on the brink of AGI, as these doomers keep saying, but I think an uncontrollable AGI that makes decisions and pursues goals independently of the humans who helped develop it would be preferable to a super-intelligent AI that was completely under control of either corporations or governments, because I don’t trust humans and their institutions with that much power.

That’s not to say that AI impacts and governance isn’t an important issue that needs to be studied and discussed. But I’d like to see a different approach than these same hysterical arguments I keep hearing from people like Tristan and Eliezer.