Planning in the 3rd Dimension

AI, Ziz, political violence, and systemic instability

This is going to be another short and rambling one as once again I’m writing in transit.

There’s been an infinite amount of things going on recently, so apologies if I don’t manage to touch on your own personal favorite groundbreaking news story. For the moment, rather than discussing the big trends and forces, I want to start with a strange and odd anecdote of a story that caught my eye this week.

Have you heard of the Zizians? I no longer do hyperlinking as I’ve taken to impromptu writing these on my phone, but if you haven’t heard of “Ziz” and their ilk, give it a Google. This is still a developing story, but in short, a transgender vegan techie going by the name “Ziz” has recently been arrested for links to multiple killings across the United States orchestrated by a cultish group of followers called “Zizians”. If all of that sounds like Fox News fodder, my apologies. But the story is weird and fascinating and very strange all around.

One of the things that interests me here is the continuing feeling that our current moment seems like a near perfect mirror of the upheaval and uncertainty of the 60’s. I know our current violence levels are still way below the long term highs of the mid twentieth century, but the broad based disillusionment with our current system feels like a harbinger of future strangeness and potential violent extremism. Personally I think the only realistic solution to this is meaningful systemic reform (second constitutional convention? Altho not sure we’d do it any better the second time around considering all the animosity and bad faith arguments).

Sadly I worry we may see even further political extremism in America before we see discontentedness abating. Likely we need either an FDR or something even more autocratic to push through genuine change. Personally I’m hoping for the former, but both the political left and right seem to cheer for the latter.

I haven’t yet discussed the politics of “Ziz”, and that’s because partially I don’t know enough to comment, and also because I don’t think they matter. My (apparently increasingly unpopular) opinion is that political violence is tantamount to terrorism. Political violence is never justified. It doesn’t matter whether you personally view the perpetrator’s politics as sympathetic.

One last interesting point though. Much of the coverage of Ziz and their antics mentions their frequent activity in Bay Area techie philosophical circles. Specifically, Ziz was active on a forum called “Less Wrong” which as far as I can tell largely centers on discussions around the practical and philosophical challenges of developing and managing artificial intelligence.

Interesting.

I took a look on the forum to see how they were reacting to the National coverage of Ziz. But as far as I could tell, they weren’t interested in that story…at all. The forum remained dead focused on break neck developments in AI and the growing challenges of how to combat the “Terminator scenario” when we now have multiple billion dollar companies racing each other to be first in developing genuine human level artificial general intelligence (AGI).

These weren’t raving lunatics either. As far as I could tell, these people are all high paid SF tech workers who know what they’re talking about, or at least know how to analyze complex problems in a cogent and methodical fashion.

Which brings me to my last point, and the segue to my cryptic article title.

I quickly stumbled on a 10,000+ word, well organized analysis of how to manage the development of AGI, relevant guardrails that should be in place, and various methodologies leading companies should implement to mitigate catastrophic AI risk. Needless to say, I didn’t read the whole thing, but about halfway through I realized this person clearly knew what they were talking about and had done some deep technical thinking about the problems in the industry. Their prediction for when we will see human level AI in the world?

2-5 years…at most.

Obviously none of this is certain. And I have to remember that I first found my way to this forum because of a radical techie cult leader arrested on suspicion of orchestrating multiple killings across the country. So despite their use of proper punctuation and good jargon, maybe the people on “Less Wrong” shouldn’t be my barometer for expert industry prognostication.

But still, for a moment let’s pretend that 2-5 year timeframe is right. What does that mean?

That falls well within the investment timeline for most asset managers, the management and financial planning window for companies, and the life planning window for individuals. But how can we possibly plan for a world where thinking robots just might be a reality by the time we have another presidential election?

The rate of change in our society is unprecedented. And I don’t know how we’re supposed to deal with it.

My dad once mentioned his biggest regret in terms of investments and financial planning is that he didn’t buy tons of Google stock in the mid 2000’s. At that point, everyone already knew what Google was. The company wasn’t a secret, and it’s not like you were getting in early on some unknown play. But even with all that public awareness and widespread adoption, the true upside of their product was not fully realized. Sometimes all you have to do to win is bet on the biggest players. You don’t have to be a genius. Just align your own interests to the most dominant actors in a system, and you’ll probably do pretty well.

For better or worse we’re in a moment of exponential change. And if AI really takes off like some people predict, we’ll quickly be in an era of geometric change. Not growth raised to the second degree, but the third degree. And beyond.

Human beings weren’t made to plan or execute in this type of instability. But here we are. So hitch up your wagons and get ready. Because in all likelihood, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Until next time, this has been

The Weekly One Pager

by Luke McGinty

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PS - it’s my birthday, so if you want to be nice, send this article to someone you think might enjoy it. Cheers!