Have the Accelerationists won?

Last November Kevin Roose announced that those in favor of going fast on AI had now won against those favoring caution, with the reinstatement of Sam Altman at OpenAI. Let's ignore whether Kevin's was a good description of the world, and deal with a more basic question: if it were so—i.e. if Team Acceleration would control the acceleration from here on out—what kind of win was it they won?

It seems to me that they would have probably won in the same sense that your dog has won if she escapes onto the road. She won the power contest with you and is probably feeling good at this moment, but if she does actually like being alive, and just has different ideas about how safe the road is, or wasn’t focused on anything so abstract as that, then whether she ultimately wins or [...]

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First published:
May 20th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/h45ngW5guruD7tS4b/winning-the-power-to-lose

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