I’m not an expert on longtermarism but I have read William McAskills “What we owe the future”.
The quote highlighted about AI is a clear demonstration on how longtermarism is being misappropriated. It describes a “rush” when the impression I got from McAskills book is that AI ethics needs to be very carefully discussed and that rushing into it is the opposite of what longtermists should do. To try and describe it briefly, this is because AI presents the risk of what McAskill describes as “value lock-in” where our current society’s values will continue long into the future, or the values that will persevere into the future will be decided by the few people who create the first generative AI.
In reality, people like Musk probably see AI as a means to push what they believe are the correct moral values long into the future. Which is terrifying…
This is why AI ethics is extremely important. We are already seeing institutional prejudices our current society possesses being perpetuated by AI, such as racism, sexism, etc. This is why when I saw that Microsoft/OpenAI was scrapping it’s AI ethics team that I was absolutely horrified…
The “rush” to produce AI is a problem with Capitalism, not longtermarism. There is a rush to create the first generative AI not because it will benefit society but because it will make buttloads of money.