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Introduction In the last few years, ‘an AI-enabled concentration of power’ has become a common expression in the AI-governance lexicon, and it has been put to use in quite a few situations. The misuse of advanced capabilities by malicious actors could lead to one (Brundage et al., 2018). So could centralised control over compute, which… Read more

Is it legitimate to make assumptions in public? Introduction The AI Futures Project wrote a “Plan A”, a positive vision for “what should happen” until 2040. It outlines goals (the solution of five problems, from the „Loss of control to superintelligent AIs“ to „AI taking everyone’s jobs“) and recommends a path to reaching them. In… Read more

Acemoglu and Johnson, in a paper on hand loom weavers’ wages in the early 19th century say: “Recognizing the essential role of choice over the direction of technology and organizational forms is not only relevant for understanding the early decades of the Industrial Revolution; it is also critical to appreciate how and why things started… Read more

In a previous blog post about the industrial revolution as an analogy for AI, I wrote a bit about how someone might end up with a monocausal narrative about what happened between 1750 and now: one that starts with the invention of the steam engine and other technologies and ends with everything else, “revolutions of all… Read more

In a widely cited blogpost called “How big a deal was the industrial revolution?” Luke Muehlhauser asks a rhetorical, but important, question: what collection of events is that? Leaving aside current disputes about what a “helpful” definition of the industrial revolution should be, below is a brief exploration of the origin of the phrase. Raymond… Read more

I’ve been reading Steven Lukes “Power, a radical view”. A number of things from the book seem notable in the context of the recent Anthropic-fable-debacle. (Here is an opinionated summary from Dean Ball, for those who haven’t followed it) – So here is a short and oversimplified summary. The book itself provides an overview of… Read more