Effective accelerationism

Last updated

Effective accelerationism, often abbreviated as "e/acc", is a 21st-century philosophical movement that advocates for an explicitly pro-technology stance. Its proponents believe that unrestricted technological progress (especially driven by artificial intelligence) is a solution to universal human problems like poverty, war and climate change. [1] They see themselves as a counterweight to more cautious views on technological innovation, often giving their opponents the derogatory labels of "doomers" or "decels" (short for deceleration). [1] [2]

Contents

The movement carries utopian undertones and argues that humans need to develop and build faster to ensure their survival and propagate consciousness throughout the universe. [3] [4] Its founders Guillaume Verdon and the pseudonymous Bayeslord see it as a way to "usher in the next evolution of consciousness, creating unthinkable next-generation lifeforms." [5]

Although effective accelerationism has been described as a fringe movement, it has gained mainstream visibility in 2023. [5] [6] A number of high-profile Silicon Valley figures, including investors Marc Andreessen and Garry Tan, explicitly endorsed it by adding "e/acc" to their public social media profiles. [5] [6]

Etymology and central beliefs

Effective accelerationism, a portmanteau of "effective altruism" and "accelerationism", [2] is a fundamentally techno-optimist movement. [7] According to Guillaume Verdon, one of the movement's founders, its aim is for human civilization to "clim[b] the Kardashev gradient", meaning its purpose is for human civilization to rise to next levels on the Kardashev scale by maximizing energy usage. [7]

To achieve this goal, effective accelerationism wants to accelerate technological progress. It is strongly focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI), because it sees AGI as fundamental for climbing the Kardashev scale. [7] The movement therefore advocates for unrestricted development and deployment of artificial intelligence. [8] Regulation of artificial intelligence and government intervention in markets more generally is met with opposition. Many of its proponents have libertarian views and think that AGI will be most aligned if many AGIs compete against each other on the marketplace. [7]

The founders of the movement see it as rooted in Jeremy England's theory on the origin of life, which is focused on entropy and thermodynamics. [7] According to them, the universe aims to increase entropy, and life is a way of increasing it. By spreading life throughout the universe and making life use up ever increasing amounts of energy, the universe's purpose would thus be fulfilled. [7]

History

Intellectual origins

While Nick Land is seen as the intellectual originator of contemporary accelerationism in general, [6] [5] the precise origins of effective accelerationism remain unclear. The earliest known reference to the movement can be traced back to a May 2022 newsletter published by four pseudonymous authors known by their X (formerly Twitter) usernames @BasedBeffJezos, @bayeslord, @zestular and @creatine_cycle. [6]

Effective accelerationism incorporates elements of older Silicon Valley subcultures such as transhumanism and extropianism, which similarly emphasized the value of progress and resisted efforts to restrain the development of technology, as well as the work of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit. [5] [9] [7]

Disclosure of the identity of BasedBeffJezos

Forbes disclosed in December 2023 that the @BasedBeffJezos persona is maintained by Guillaume Verdon, a Canadian former Google quantum computing engineer and theoretical physicist. [10] The revelation was supported by a voice analysis conducted by the National Center for Media Forensics of the University of Colorado Denver, which further confirmed the match between Jezos and Verdon. The magazine justified its decision to disclose Verdon's identity on the grounds of it being "in the public interest". [10]

On 29 December 2023 Guillaume Verdon was interviewed by Lex Fridman on the Lex Fridman Podcast and introduced as the "founder of [the] e/acc (effective accelerationism) movement". [11]

Relation to other movements

Traditional accelerationism

Traditional accelerationism, as developed by the British philosopher Nick Land, sees the acceleration of technological change as a way to bring about a fundamental transformation of current culture, society, and the political economy. [1] In his earlier writings he saw the acceleration of capitalism as a way to overcome this economic system itself. [1] In contrast, effective accelerationism does not seek to overcome capitalism or to introduce radical societal change but tries to maximize the probability of a technocapital singularity, triggering an intelligence explosion throughout the universe and maximizing energy usage. [6] [7]

Effective altruism

Effective accelerationism also diverges from the principles of effective altruism, which prioritizes using evidence and reasoning to identify the most effective ways to altruistically improve the world. [1] This divergence especially comes from one school of thought within effective altruism – longtermism. Under a longtermist view, a very cautious handling of AGI is necessary to secure a human-aligned AGI, because longtermists fear that any misaligned AGI could lead to human extinction in the end. [7]

In contrast, effective accelerationism emphasizes the transformative potential of technology and capitalism. [12] [13] Its proponents consider that existential risks from AGI are negligible, and that even if it were not, decentralized free markets would much better mitigate this risk than centralized governmental regulation. [7]

Degrowth

Effective accelerationism also stands in stark contrast with the degrowth movement, sometimes described by it as "decelerationism". The degrowth movement advocates for reducing economic activity and consumption to address ecological and social issues. Effective accelerationism on the contrary embraces technological progress, energy consumption and the dynamics of capitalism, rather than advocating for a reduction in economic activity. [12]

Reception

The "Techno-Optimist Manifesto", [14] a 2023 essay by Marc Andreessen, has been described by the Financial Times and the German Süddeutsche Zeitung as espousing the views of effective accelerationism. [3] [15] In a 2023 essay "Effective obfuscation", Molly White critiques the movement, suggesting it merely provides a superficial philosophical cover for the industry's traditional motives and behaviors. She further argues that a tech industry "led by a bunch of techno-utopianists and those who think they can reduce everything to markets and equations" has already been attempted, primarily serving as a tool for the wealthy to retroactively justify their choices rather than influencing meaningful decision-making. [4]

David Swan of the The Sydney Morning Herald has criticized effective accelerationism due to its opposition to government and industry self-regulation. He argues that "innovations like AI needs thoughtful regulations and guardrails [...] to avoid the myriad mistakes Silicon Valley has already made". [16] During the 2023 Reagan National Defense Forum, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo cautioned against embracing the "move fast and break things" mentality associated with "effective acceleration[ sic ]". She emphasized the need to exercise caution in dealing with AI, stating "that's too dangerous. You can't break things when you are talking about AI". [5] [17] In a similar vein, Ellen Huet argued on Bloomberg News that some of the ideas of the movement were "deeply unsettling", focusing especially on Guillaume Verdon's "post-humanism" and the view that "natural selection could lead AI to replace us [humans] as the dominant species." [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I. J. Good's intelligence explosion model, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an "explosion" in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Tegmark</span> Swedish-American cosmologist

Max Erik Tegmark is a Swedish-American physicist, machine learning researcher and author. He is best known for his book Life 3.0 about what the world might look like as artificial intelligence continues to improve. Tegmark is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Andreessen</span> American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer (born 1971)

Marc Lowell Andreessen is an American businessman and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard. Andreessen is also a co-founder of Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites and an inductee in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame. Andreessen's net-worth is estimated at $1.7 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Technological utopianism</span> Any ideology based on the premise that advances in technology could bring a utopia

Technological utopianism is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal.

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that can perform as well or better than humans on a wide range of cognitive tasks, as opposed to narrow AI, which is designed for specific tasks. It is one of various definitions of strong AI.

The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), is a non-profit research institute focused since 2005 on identifying and managing potential existential risks from artificial general intelligence. MIRI's work has focused on a friendly AI approach to system design and on predicting the rate of technology development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AI takeover</span> Hypothetical artificial intelligence scenario

An AI takeover is a scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the dominant form of intelligence on Earth, as computer programs or robots effectively take control of the planet away from the human species. Possible scenarios include replacement of the entire human workforce due to automation, takeover by a superintelligent AI, and the popular notion of a robot uprising. Stories of AI takeovers are very popular throughout science fiction. Some public figures, such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have advocated research into precautionary measures to ensure future superintelligent machines remain under human control.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jaan Tallinn</span> Estonian programmer and investor

Jaan Tallinn is an Estonian billionaire computer programmer and investor known for his participation in the development of Skype and file-sharing application FastTrack/Kazaa.

Anthropic PBC is an American artificial intelligence (AI) startup company, founded by former members of OpenAI. Anthropic has developed a family of large language models named Claude. It is connected to the effective altruism movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Goertzel</span> Artificial intelligence researcher

Ben Goertzel is a computer scientist, artificial intelligence researcher, and businessman. He helped popularize the term 'artificial general intelligence'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liv Boeree</span> British poker player, television presenter, speaker, and writer

Olivia "Liv" Boeree is a British science communicator, television presenter, host of the Win-Win Podcast, and former professional poker player. She is a World Series of Poker (WSOP) and European Poker Tour (EPT) champion, and is the only female player in history to win both a WSOP bracelet and an EPT event. Boeree is a 3× winner of the Global Poker Index European Female Player of the year. As of September 2021, having retired in late 2019, Boeree still ranks among the top ten women in poker history in terms of all-time money winnings.

<i>LessWrong</i> Rationality-focused community blog

LessWrong is a community blog and forum focused on discussion of cognitive biases, philosophy, psychology, economics, rationality, and artificial intelligence, among other topics.

Effective altruism (EA) is a 21st-century philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". People who pursue the goals of effective altruism, sometimes called effective altruists, may choose careers based on the amount of good that they expect the career to achieve or donate to charities based on the goal of maximising positive impact. They may work on the prioritization of scientific projects, entrepreneurial ventures, and policy initiatives estimated to save the most lives or reduce the most suffering.

Accelerationism is a range of revolutionary and reactionary ideas in left-wing and right-wing ideologies that call for the drastic intensification of capitalist growth, technological change, infrastructure sabotage and other processes of social change to destabilize existing systems and create radical social transformations, otherwise referred to as "acceleration". It has been regarded as an ideological spectrum divided into mutually contradictory left-wing and right-wing variants, both of which support the indefinite intensification of capitalism and its structures as well as the conditions for a technological singularity, a hypothetical point in time where technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible.

Existential risk from artificial general intelligence is the idea that substantial progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could result in human extinction or an irreversible global catastrophe.

Murray Patrick Shanahan is a professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London, in the Department of Computing, and a senior scientist at DeepMind. He researches artificial intelligence, robotics, and cognitive science.

Open Philanthropy is a research and grantmaking foundation that makes grants based on the doctrine of effective altruism. It was founded as a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures. Its current chief executive officer is Alexander Berger, and its main funders are Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz. Dustin says that their wealth, worth $11 billion, is "pooled up around us right now, but it belongs to the world. We intend not to have much when we die."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Hartley</span> American venture capitalist and author

Scott Hartley is a venture capitalist and an author. He previously worked for Silicon Valley technology companies such as Google and Facebook as well as Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He was a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the White House and a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, a firm on Sand Hill Road.

<i>Slate Star Codex</i> Blog focused on psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and futurism

Slate Star Codex (SSC) is a blog focused on science, medicine, philosophy, politics, and futurism. The blog was written by Scott Alexander Siskind, a San Francisco Bay Area psychiatrist, under the pen name Scott Alexander.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lex Fridman</span> Russian-American scientist and podcast host (born 1983)

Lex Fridman is a Russian-American computer scientist and podcaster. He hosts the Lex Fridman Podcast, in which he interviews guests, which have included prominent figures in various fields, including science, technology, sports, and politics.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Soufi, Daniel (6 January 2024). "'Accelerate or die,' the controversial ideology that proposes the unlimited advance of artificial intelligence". El País . Archived from the original on 20 January 2024. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  2. 1 2 MacColl, Margaux (7 October 2023). "It's a Cult': Inside Effective Accelerationism, the Pro-AI Movement Taking Over Silicon Valley". The Information . Archived from the original on 20 November 2023. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
  3. 1 2 Hurtz, Simon (10 November 2023). "Tech-Szene im Silicon Valley: Ihr Gott ist die KI". Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German). Archived from the original on 10 November 2023. Retrieved 24 November 2023.
  4. 1 2 White, Molly (26 November 2023). "Effective obfuscation". Citation Needed. Archived from the original on 27 November 2023. Retrieved 27 November 2023– via Substack.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Roose, Kevin (10 December 2023). "This A.I. Subculture's Motto: Go, Go, Go". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 11 December 2023. Retrieved 10 December 2023.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Chowdhury, Hasan (28 July 2023). "Silicon Valley's favorite obscure theory about progress at all costs, which has been embraced by Marc Andreessen". Business Insider . Archived from the original on 20 November 2023. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Torres, Émile P. (14 December 2023). "'Effective Accelerationism' and the Pursuit of Cosmic Utopia". Truthdig . Archived from the original on 18 December 2023. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  8. ↑ Jones, Rachyl (16 October 2023). "Marc Andreessen just dropped a 'Techno-Optimist Manifesto' that sees a world of 50 billion people settling other planets". Fortune . Archived from the original on 28 November 2023. Retrieved 26 November 2023.
  9. ↑ Breland, Ali (6 December 2023). "Meet the Silicon Valley CEOs who say greed is good—even if it kills us all". Mother Jones . Archived from the original on 8 December 2023. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
  10. 1 2 Baker-White, Emily (1 December 2023). "Who Is @BasedBeffJezos, The Leader Of The Tech Elite's 'E/Acc' Movement?". Forbes . Archived from the original on 11 December 2023. Retrieved 3 December 2023.
  11. ↑ Guillaume Verdon: Beff Jezos, E/acc Movement, Physics, Computation & AGI (Podcast). Lex Fridman Podcast. Vol. 407. 29 December 2023. Archived from the original on 30 December 2023. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
  12. 1 2 Wilhelm, Alex (20 November 2023). "Effective accelerationism, doomers, decels, and how to flaunt your AI priors". TechCrunch . Archived from the original on 23 November 2023. Retrieved 24 November 2023.
  13. ↑ Leroy, Thomas (23 November 2023). "Effective altruism, effective accelerationism: quels sont ces deux courants qui divisent le monde de l'IA ?". BFM TV (in French). Archived from the original on 23 November 2023. Retrieved 24 November 2023.
  14. ↑ Andreessen, Marc (16 October 2023). "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto". Andreessen Horowitz . Archived from the original on 23 November 2023. Retrieved 24 November 2023.
  15. ↑ Kelly, Jemima (22 October 2023). "I read Andreessen's 'techno-optimist manifesto' so you don't have to". Financial Times . Archived from the original on 14 January 2024. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
  16. ↑ Swan, David (29 October 2023). "'We are conquerors': Why Silicon Valley's latest fad is its deadliest". The Sydney Morning Herald . Archived from the original on 13 November 2023. Retrieved 24 November 2023.
  17. ↑ Reagan National Defense Forum. Simi Valley: Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute. 2 December 2023. Event occurs at 21:03. Archived from the original on 12 December 2023. Retrieved 14 December 2023– via YouTube.
  18. ↑ Huet, Ellen (6 December 2023). "A Cultural Divide Over AI Forms in Silicon Valley". Bloomberg News . Archived from the original on 30 December 2023. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.