banteg amplifies critique of AI safety culture: longtermist moral math as 'mass delusion'
banteg · x · 2026-09-18
Developer banteg shared and endorsed a critique of the AI safety community, calling its mindset a "mass delusion of grandeur" — believers cast themselves as responsible for humanity's entire light cone, and Benthamite utilitarianism leads naturally to panopticon-style governance, e.g. to stop model distillation or ban open source. The quoted greentext post traces a step-by-step slide from effective altruism's mosquito nets to counting quadrillions of future people, which rationalizes absurd risk tradeoffs. Banteg adds that longtermist moral math collapses once you apply an ordinary discount rate.
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