A Former AI Doomer Reveals a Dark Truth
Cal Newport talks with former transhumanist Emil Torres about the religious-like ideologies behind AI labs, and why both AI safety advocates and accelerationists share the same posthuman end goal.
The gist
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Torres argues that leaders at Anthropic and OpenAI see biological humans as a step toward a digital-only future, not something to preserve.
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The AI safety debate is misframed because alignment means aligning AI with transhumanist values, not protecting human life.
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Effective altruism draws people in with poverty reduction but redirects focus to hypothetical future digital beings, making present human welfare secondary.
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Torres says the AI race started from ideology, not profit, giving these companies a very different risk tolerance than typical corporations.
Made by someone on this episode
The Real Time Tech Apocalypse Newsletter
· Émile Torres's
— Émile P. Torres's newsletter about technology, AI, and TESCREAL ide...
Dystopia Now
· Émile Torres's
— A podcast co-hosted by Émile P. Torres covering dark technology top...
Also mentioned
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Why the Future Doesn't Need Us
· "He published a famous article, widely discussed, on April 1st 2000 in Wired magazine of all places and all..."
57:44
Here Be Dragons
· "He has this moment of what I would describe as a moment of clarity in his, I think it was 2015, book Here..."
1:13:33
A Prohuman Manifesto
· "My more recent, there's one, A Prohuman Manifesto, is I think another good, I mean in so far as anything I..."
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