Taking a look at the capabilities and deployment of AI in 2035, do I think that there was more progress than in a world without e/acc? I will resolve this entirely based on my opinion.
There are multiple ways e/acc could speed up progress - looser regulation, more funding for AI companies, more motivation to start and work in the industry, and so on.
There are multiple ways e/acc could slow down progress - political backlash, AI incidents that could have been avoided with more of a safety mindset causing strict regulation, and so on.
I'm not sure if AI doom counts as speeding up or slowing down progress. My impression is most e/accs would count that as slowing down, but the leader of the movement would count that as a success. But we won't be around to resolve the question in that case, so I don't think that matters.
Related questions
The debate between Beff and Connor was good and clarifying:
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST): Showdown Between e/acc Leader And Doomer - Connor Leahy + Beff Jezos
Episode webpage: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/machinelearningstreettalk/episodes/Showdown-Between-eacc-Leader-And-Doomer---Connor-Leahy--Beff-Jezos-e2far3q
betting "no" solely based on the fact that the entire e/acc crowd is nothing but a bunch of twitter losers who are unable to have any meaningful impact on the real world.
also im wondering how you will attribute changes in the velocity to "e/acc" because that seems to be a rather fuzzy definition to me. is altman e/acc? is OAI e/acc? is microsoft e/acc or is it (as i would understand it) just this midwit jezos dude and his twitter followers?
@lukres its this dude: https://twitter.com/BasedBeffJezos who has his own startup and i think first floated the idea of e/acc. Forbes ran a story on him, doxxing him, so now he also maintains a clear-name twitter profile.
hes cultivating this weird brand of techno-capitalist sociopathy and basically runs his little ex-crypto bro cult around that (nobody cares what the "ideology" is, they all just want to make money). he posts a lot of delusionally grand stuff but i dont think ever followed up on much of that. im getting major scammer vibes off of him but frankly, i never occupied myself with him beyond what i just posted
E: i also just remembered that i think i read some creep shit about him like he went on one date with this woman and got axed and then told everyone that she slept with her or some shit? cant find it rn so maybe im misremembering
what i do know is that hes posting cringe shit like this to try and look tough but hes actually just a lardass
@Symmetry I'll only be including those people who called themselves e/acc clearly at some point. So no to Sam Altman, yes to Garry Tan. No to yCombinator in general, yes to a16z. But also if a16z was going to be making AI bets regardless of whether they call themselves e/acc, then the only relevant thing is their e/acc branding, and the effects that has. Yes I know that might be very hard to measure, hence my resolving to my opinion.
@Symmetry "i also just remembered that i think i read some creep shit about him like he went on one date with this woman and got axed and then told everyone that she slept with her or some shit? cant find it rn so maybe im misremembering" this is approximately correct.
"hes cultivating this weird brand of techno-capitalist sociopathy and basically runs his little ex-crypto bro cult around that (nobody cares what the "ideology" is, they all just want to make money)" i don't think this is fair.