Opinion
McCord: Treating AI progress as ultimate end risks abandoning human defense
“To say that that is the ultimate end of human life, that that's what we move towards, gives you these kind of sinister conclusions, which is like, we should pass the baton to this higher, better intelligence if we can. You know, in other words, like. There's n…”
Prediction Held up
McCord: AI infrastructure spending will reach $1T by early 2030s
“I think, you know, it'll be the biggest infrastructure build that humanity has ever done, I think. I think you could make that argument. I think we will hit a trillion dollars in the early 20 thirties.”
Insight
McCord: Complex systems adapt best under simple property and liability rules
“Actually, the best way in complex systems is to have
A very simple uniform set of rules like property rights or contract law or tort liability.
And these things are much better at adapting than trying to come up with a patchwork of systems that just lead to in…”
Assertion Supported
McCord: 4,000 Google Employees Protested Project Maven Military AI Work
“After I left, after I rolled off the project, we had deployed it in Afghanistan, all that, 4000 people came together and they protested Google's involvement.”
Insight
McCord: Outsourcing moral deliberation leads ordinary people to commit atrocities
“Normal people, people who don't have great evil you know, genetically or pre, or, you know, they weren't engaging in active malice. Became concentration camp guards. Because they outsourced gradually, you know, bit by bit, pieces of their moral deliberation.”
Insight
McCord: Human biological passivity makes AI cognitive offloading uniquely dangerous
“Human brain works on glucose. There's only so much glucose to go around. We're biologically wired to be passive. So AI presents this very interesting, sinister. It's very good in the sense that it can offload plausibly everything, but it's bad in the sense tha…”
Opinion
McCord: EA, Rationalism, and Longtermism Dominate the AI Practitioner Community
“That's the most common dominant philosophy in the practitioner community, and it's three philosophies in a trench coat, but they're all very entangled. One is effective altruism, One is rationalism, one is long-termism.”
Opinion
McCord: Accelerationism confuses tech progress as an end rather than means
“And so it becomes like the ultimate goal is almost the ultimate end of human life is a kind of technological progress, or it's a progress in harnessing energy. I think that completely confuses the means with the ends. I think technology is incredible equipment…”
Assertion Supported
McCord: Prime Intellect's Decentralized Training Run Challenges Centralization Assumptions
“There's a huge decentralized training run that I think prime intellect did recently that, you know, shows that the assumptions everyone has about how AI is just going to be a centralized thing could be wrong.”
Insight
McCord: AI Regulation Offers Government a Unique Vector for Power Expansion
“AI touches everything, and so AI regulation is a unique vector for, like, government Power.”
Opinion
McCord: AI researchers do not really know what reasoning is
“Well, I think the reason for that is AI researchers don't really know what reasoning is.”
Opinion
McCord: Silicon Valley culture is trapped in mimetic ideological bubbles
“There are these, like, strong mimetic bubbles in Silicon Valley, where people don't even really think they're busy, and they're like, all my other friends care about existential risk, I'm in, you know.”
Insight
McCord: Tech revolutions offer two paths, building for freedom or control
“Whenever you have a technological revolution, you have two choices. You either build for freedom, or you watch as others build for control”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCord: AI personalization risks trapping users in self-curated realities
“The other thing that I think is concerning is it could create a hall of mirrors culture where everyone has a kind of a self curated reality.”
Insight
McCord: AI founders should target markets where decision quality outweighs engagement
“When you use a Bloomberg terminal, you actually want to optimize for decision quality. When you are scrolling at night, you're kind of in engagement mode, right? So what does that tell an entrepreneur? Well, it tells maybe, like, look at those markets Where li…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McCord: US States Seek Over 700 Different AI Regulations
“The vast majority of states are pretty regulation happy and want to put up, like, 700 plus different versions.”
Assertion Supported
McCord: Apple paper shows minor perturbations drop AI reasoning scores by 65%
“But then you have Apple come out with a paper that shows that if you do minor perturbations, you drop the reasoning score on these systems by like, 65%.”
Assertion Supported
McCord: A Wyoming mayoral candidate ran pledging to defer decisions to ChatGPT
“So this forty-year-old guy in Wyoming ran for mayor. Recently, and he, his name is Victor, and he runs as the humble meat avatar of an, of a chat GPT, of AI system. So he says, like, I'm gonna run, because humans can run from air, AI can't, but really I'm just…”
