LLM Inevitabilism

One of the negative consequences of the “modern secular age” is that many very intelligent, thoughtful people feel justified in brushing away millennia of philosophical and religious thought because they deem it outdated or no longer relevant. (The book A Secular Age is a great read on this, btw, I think I’ve recommended it here on HN at least half a dozen times.)

And so a result of this is that they fail to notice the same recurring psychological patterns that underly thoughts about how the world is, and how it will be in the future - and then adjust their positions because of this awareness.

For example - this AI inevitabilism stuff is not dissimilar to many ideas originally from the Reformation, like predestination. The notion that history is just on some inevitable pre-planned path is not a new idea, except now the actor has changed from God to technology. On a psychological level it’s the same thing: an offloading of freedom and responsibility to a powerful, vaguely defined force that may or may not exist outside the collective minds of human society.

I think this is a case of bad pattern matching, to be frank. Two cosmetically similar things don't necessarily have a shared cause. When you see billions in investment to make something happen (AI) because of obvious incentives, it's very reasonable to see that as something that's likely to happen; something you might be foolish to bet against. This is qualitatively different from the kind of predestination present in many religions where adherents have assurance of the predestined outcome often despite human efforts and incentives. A belief in a predestined outcome is very different from extrapolating current trends into the future.

Yes, nobody is claiming it's inevitable based on nothing, it's based on first principles thinking: economics, incentives, game theory, human psychology. Trying to recast this in terms of "predestination" gives me strong wordcel vibes.

Nobody serious is claiming theological predesination is based on "nothing", either. Talk about poor pattern matching.

You are, of course, entitled to your religious convictions. But to most people outside of your religious community, the evidence for some specific theological claim (such as predestination) looks an awful lot like "nothing". In contrast, claims about the trajectory of AI (whether you agree with the claims or not) are based on easily-verifiable, public knowledge about the recent history of AI development.

It is not a "specific theological claim" either, rather a school of theological discourse. You're literally doing free-form association now and pretending to have novel insights into centuries of work on the issue.

I'm not pretending to any novel insights. Most of us who don't have much use for theology are generally unimpressed by its discourse. Not novel at all. And the "centuries of work" without concrete developments that exist outside of the minds of those invested in the discourse is one reason why many of us are unimpressed. In contrast, AI development is resulting in concrete changes that are easily verified by anyone and on much shorter time scales.