Smash Notes

Back to Peter Thiel: “We Need to Hit the Accelerator as Hard as Possible” on AI, with Peter Thiel.

Are the People Building AI Good?

Peter Thiel scores the people building AI companies as far more good than bad across the board. Endless amounts of time have gone into their motives, and one dimension stays hard to figure out but is probably quite important.

The people doing the work very easily get demonized and scapegoated. Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Zuckerberg are among the names he picks. Even in the case of AI, who is doing the work is a really important question.

Biography turns on the same point. It is about who those individuals are, not an idiosyncratic story with nothing to do with the companies they built or the world they are shaping.

Grokipedia·Peter Thiel·Sam Altman

Transcript

Peter Thiel: “We Need to Hit the Accelerator as Hard as Possible” on AI ·

The Builders

More from this episode

  1. Will AI Make the Median Person Better Off?Peter Thiel expects AI to leave the median person better off, with the qualifier that nobody really knows and nobody can be certain.
  2. Should the United States Pause AI?Peter Thiel says the United States should not pause AI. He is not in the pause camp, and he says the country needs to hit the accelerator as hard as possible.
  3. How Likely Is an AI Doomsday?Peter Thiel does not think AI is going to kill everybody on the planet.
  4. What Does Peter Thiel Mean by the Antichrist?Peter Thiel means a medieval, biblical tyrant who would rule the whole world at the end of history.
  5. Why Does Peter Thiel Talk About the Antichrist?Peter Thiel talks about the Antichrist because the religious wording keeps one world government from winning without any questions.
  6. Is Survival the Only Goal for Humanity?Peter Thiel says survival cannot be the only goal for humanity. It is an extremely important goal, and he wants humanity both to survive and to flourish.
  7. Is Evil Better Than Incompetence?Peter Thiel ranks good above evil, and evil above incompetence.
  8. Will AI Ever Be Conscious?Peter Thiel does not think AI is conscious, and he does not think it ever will be.

People

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