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

Is Evil Better Than Incompetence?

Peter Thiel ranks good above evil, and evil above incompetence. Bad, in this ranking, means incompetent, and it does matter that the people building these companies avoid being evil.

Appearing not to be evil can be a fake PR stunt. Bill Gates is into virtue signaling and Elon Musk is into vice signaling, and vice signaling may be more honest, even the mark of a better person. A Ferrari is an evil car in the example because it does not get many miles to the gallon. A Trabi that does not work is worse than a golf cart because it breaks down all the time, which makes it a bad car. Better to be good than evil. When a bland bureaucrat stands for bad, the bureaucrat is incompetent, while the person called evil gets something done. Elon Musk gets described as evil and also as irrelevant, yet to the extent he is described as evil he is at least not described as bad.

The same split is the difference between Marlowe's Faust and Goethe's Faust. Marlowe's Faust is a fake scientist, a fraud, a magician and trickster, a fake alchemist who rips people off and goes straight to hell. Goethe's Faust works with the devil, does more good than evil, and gets saved. He prefers Goethe to Marlowe. He does not think of himself as the devil in that story, or as Faust.

Grokipedia·Peter Thiel·Bill Gates

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. Are the People Building AI Good?Peter Thiel scores the people building AI companies as far more good than bad across the board.
  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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