Your guide to astroturf fake anti-AI groups
Chatbots are popular — ChatGPT claims 900 million monthly users. But the AI bubble is also widely hated — as its ill effects become more and more obvious. This opens an obvious market opportunity for the AI vendors: what if we start our own anti-AI groups, under our control? We can keep them…
Chatbots are popular — ChatGPT claims 900 million monthly users. But the AI bubble is also widely hated — as its ill effects become more and more obvious. This opens an obvious market opportunity for the AI vendors: what if we start our own anti-AI groups, under our control? We can keep them moderate! Today’s post is a short guide to fake anti-AI organisations and the shapes they take. These groups are funded by the AI vendors, but also by the Effective Altruism cult. Altruism that’s effective sounds like a nice idea! But what the Effective Altruists actually believe is that the most effective altruism in the world is fighting the robot apocalypse, where the computers rise up and turn humanity into paperclips. They’re fighting the bad AI for the benefit of future hypothetical emulated humans running on the mind of the coming good AI. This is much more important than tawdry present-day issues. I wish I was exaggerating. The Effective Altruists want to stop the doomsday AI, which doesn’t exist — but they love their chatbots and their AI images. Effective Altruists are not anti-AI in any real-world manner. The Effective Altruists put on a professional face — and they also run cult induction events where they run waterboarding sessions as a cult bonding exercise. So I’d treat Effective Altruist influences with some caution. Our main example today is Irreplaceable.org! Your new professional anti-AI organisation! Their front page says: [Irreplaceable.org] Right now, in a few rooms in Northern California, a handful of rich and powerful tech executives are trying to write the future of human civilization. So instead, a few well-funded Effective Altruist cultists in rooms in Northern California want to write the future their way. Irreplaceable’s big splash was in The Atlantic on Friday, where they talked to Jeremy Ormstein from Irreplaceable. They listed Ormstein as being from climate group the Sunrise Movement — but author Matteo Wong curiously failed to note Ormstein was also with AI doomers the Center for AI Safety, which is bankrolled by effective altruist organisation Coefficient Giving, formerly OpenPhilanthropy, funded by Dustin Moskovitz, formerly of Facebook. Jeremy is openly an AI doomsday cultist: [Atlantic, archive] People have the intuition that if we create machines more powerful than people, that could go dangerously and terribly wrong. You might think that’s a bit of an “if.” Irreplaceable doesn’t list who’s paying for all of this, and Matteo Wong somehow didn’t get around to asking. But someone is absolutely bankrolling this thing. This new “grass roots” group that launched less than a week ago already has the money for multiple well-paid jobs. [Irreplaceable, archive] Their recruiter, Tristan Zucker — previously of ScaleAI — said on LinkedIn a few weeks ago: [LinkedIn, archive] I’m working with a really special group of people to build a grassroots movement to ensure AI benefits us all… and we’re hiring! Grass is not usually made of plastic. Irreplaceable does not claim an agenda: When pressed, nobody from Irreplaceable and no other climate activists turning to AI would articulate a concrete AI agenda. This is not quite the case. Here’s just one job opening at Irreplaceable, detailing some of their agenda: [Irreplaceable, archive] Walkout campaign … the week of October 20, Students on 100+ college campuses will walk out of class with one demand: pause AI and bring it under public control. Two weeks later, we will go vote. … We are seeking distributed organizers to recruit and coach the students who lead walkouts on their own campuses. You’ll be responsible for a dozen ‘flagship’ campus groups, recruiting the leaders and supporting them through the walkout. … You’ll work alongside a cohort of distributed organizers, a political-partnerships team, and a digital creator program. Paid two grand a week to astroturf a student uprising. Not bad! Doesn’t get more grass roots than that! But there’s a lot more to the fake-anti-AI push than Irreplaceable. There’s an online petition group in the UK that was called SumOfUs and is now called Eko. Eko says it exists to hold corporations to account. Eko’s latest campaign is “Stop the billionaire race to replace humanity”! It’s not about stopping the corporate AI bubble damage or the companies perpetrating it in any meaningful way. It’s about: [Eko] a strong demand to decision-makers that we the people be at the centre of AI development It’s not about stopping a thing. Eko is explicitly pushing for more AI. The campaign promotes a petition by Effective Altruist nonprofit the Future Of Life Institute to sign their “Pro-Human AI Declaration”. Artificial Intelligence should serve humanity, or a portion thereof, and not actually be stopped. [Future of Life, PDF] The Future of Life Institute previously came to fame for funding a Swedish neo-Nazi group which FLI founder Max Tegmark’s brother Per wrote for. FLI did withdraw the donation when it came to light. [Expo] Then there’s Pause AI. The problem’s right there in the name. Do we stop climate change, or do we just pause it? Do we stop murder or do we just pause it? Pause AI are full-on AI doomsday believers: [Bluesky] The reality is there is a race between people who are trying to build a God-like entity that will basically most likely kill everyone, and us. The people who are trying to coordinate to stop them. So what we need to do is get this coordination to be on an exponential path as well. Right. Even if a group is not AI doomsday cultists, you can always tell the fake groups because they push moderation, not stopping anything. QuitGPT wants you to be outraged at OpenAI in particular for dealing with President Trump, and you should boycott ChatGPT! Up until recently, they recommended you use Claude instead. I wonder who paid for that one. [QuitGPT] There are real grassroots anti-AI groups out there. A good way to tell is they talk like people and not like cultists, or marketers, or cult marketers. I spend time with Stop Gen AI, who I’ve covered on Pivot to AI previously. Stop Gen AI has an Open House Action Planning video meetup Saturday next week, 12 September, at 17:00 UTC — that’s 6pm UK time, 1pm Eastern and 10am Pacific. I may or may not be on, but I’ll try. [Stop Gen AI] Video — PodcastSource: Pivot to AI — Published — Category: Business