AI and me and a hero called Mrinank

The Age of Disempowerment

‘The Ministry of Truth.’ It’s always worth asking what a new slogan is disguising, what the movement behind it is secretly taking away from you while appearing to give. It is obvious that no movement, no political state, with the word ‘liberty’ in its name ever offered freedom – it offered, as we all know well enough, the exact opposite. Same with the Democratic Republic of —, the People’s Republic of —, and so on. Even the first republic to be envisioned, Plato’s Republic, was in important respects a totalitarian state.

But the effect is far more pervasive than we think. David Bohm rightly called the Enlightenment the ‘Endarkenment’: it closed the Western mind for several hundred years to important modes of understanding, the loss of which has – through political and philosophical positions of reductive materialism – not only fuelled the rise of highly oppressive regimes, but truly immiserated generations of people who were falsely taught to believe that nothing in their lives any longer had meaning.

Don’t get me wrong: if I had been alive in the early eighteenth century I imagine I would – I hope not uncritically or without reserve – have embraced the value of such a movement, seeing in it the potential for freeing people from many fears and superstitions, and giving them renewed self-respect. But there is a principle that ensures that the light in the eyes at the heady outset of a movement sooner or later gives way to darkness - darkness all too visible.

With ‘woke’, people actually closed their eyes and fell asleep – what Goya called the sleep of reason.

                          ‘The sleep of reason brings forth monsters’ by Goya, c1799

The liberal became the passionately illiberal. While their rhetoric was of kindness, they were often vicious, vindictive, and filled with hate. The intentions of DEI on the surface might have been good, but produced the opposite of diversity, of equity, and of inclusivity. Greater freedom for women was once an inspiring battle cry, but the fact is that Women’s Lib has not issued in an era of greater happiness for women. Happiness and mental health has declined over the last 40 years even more steeply in women than in men.

People like myself risk being called names for pointing out realities that we should all be looking at squarely, even if they do not accord with the prejudices into which we have been vigorously indoctrinated. Compulsory brain-washing sessions, which permitted no diversity of opinion, were apparently how the battle for ‘freedom’ was to be won.

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There are many directions in which I could take this piece, especially as I am preparing to give the keynote address at a meeting on cognitive freedom at Duke in March, so the topic is much on my mind. But I want to follow just one.

Environmental disasters will be grievous, tragic, and unimaginably destructive. That is something I find hard to come to terms with. All the same, as you know, I now believe that = the threat posed by AI is worse still. Life may ultimately survive the first kind of disaster; and maybe even forms of society will survive – who knows, perhaps a truer society will emerge, one held together by trust, compassion, and fellowship, not dishonesty, exploitation and enmity. But AI spells death, soon.

Two days ago a gentleman called Mrinank Sharma wrote to me sending a paper, which can be read here. I found it troubling, but very much in line with what I was learning about the impact of AI on humans, especially those who believed they had a ‘relationship’ with a machine. And the headlined word ‘disempowerment’ caught my attention, because the catchword of our age is ‘empowerment’, while in fact there can never have existed a disempowerment to compare with what is coming to us all at breakneck speed through the espousing of AI. And one of the things Sharma told me about his paper was ‘I build upon your concept of valueception, but am investigating how AI assistants could limit people’s abilities to valuecept’.

Now, the word ‘valueception’ may sound odd initially. It is a translation of the word Wertnehmung used by the great philosopher of value Max Scheler, and brings into focus our special capacity for realising intuitively the value of something before we have any way of calculating it. As you know, I am convinced of the central place of value in our consciousness – how it is not something we invent to cheer ourselves up, but something that pre-exists us, and is a fundamental aspect of consciousness itself. I hold that the cosmos is in evolution, and part of that evolution is coming to know itself through the unfolding of potential into actuality. The special role of humans is to resonate, to reciprocate, to take respons-ibility for helping the values of the true, the good, the beautiful and the sacred to come evermore forth into being. We either respond and help them grow, or we fail to do so and let them perish. That is our fateful choice, individually and as a people. And if we should ever go from the world, no machine will ever be able to fulfil this role in an eternity of time.

The next day I received a message from my colleague the neuroscientist and philosopher Àlex Gómez-Marín, enclosing a link to the following public letter from Mrinank Sharma, about his resignation from Anthropic. Anthropic is one of the richest corporations in the world, its value rocketing from $183 billion to $350 billion in four months. I had just come across it, because in a class action on behalf of the world’s authors (of whom I am of course one), Anthropic was forced to pay out a paltry $1.5 billion to the authors whose work it had strip-mined and ripped off to feed its AI. So, suddenly, several threads came together.

Please read Mrinank’s resignation letter:

Dear Colleagues,

I’ve decided to leave Anthropic. My last day will be February 9th.

Thank you. There is so much here that inspires and has inspired me. To name some of those things: a sincere desire and drive to show up in such a challenging situation, and aspire to contribute in an impactful and high-integrity way; a willingness to make difficult decisions and stand for what is good; an unreasonable amount of intellectual brilliance and determination; and, of course, the considerable kindness that pervades our culture.

I’ve achieved what I wanted to here. I arrived in San Francisco two years ago, having wrapped up my PhD and wanting to contribute to AI safety. I feel lucky to have been able to contribute to what I have here; understanding AI sycophancy and its causes; developing defences to reduce risks from Al-assisted bioterrorism; actually putting those defences into production; and writing one of the first AI safety eases. I’m especially proud of my recent efforts to help us live our values via internal transparency mechanisms; and also my final project on understanding how AI assistants could make us less human or distort our humanity. Thank you for your trust.

Nevertheless, it is clear to me that the time has come to move on. I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation. The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment. We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences. Moreover, throughout my time here, I’ve repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let our values govern our actions. I’ve seen this within myself, within the organization, where we constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most, and throughout broader society too.

It is through holding this situation and listening as best I can that what I must do becomes clear. I want to contribute in a way that feels fully in my integrity, and that allows me to bring to bear more of my particularities. I want to explore the questions that feel truly essential to me, the questions that David Whyte would say “have no right to go away”, the questions that Rilke implores us to “live”. For me, this means leaving.

What comes next. I do not know. I think fondly of the famous Zen quote “not knowing is most intimate”. My intention is to create space to set aside the structures that have held me these past years, and see what might emerge in their absence. I feel called to writing that addresses and engages fully with the place we find ourselves, and that places poetic truth alongside scientific truth as equally valid ways of knowing, both of which I believe have something essential to contribute when developing new technology. I hope to explore a poetry degree and devote myself to the practice of courageous speech. I am also excited to deepen my practice of facilitation, coaching, community building and group work. We shall see what unfolds.

Thank you, and goodbye. I’ve learnt so much from being here and I wish you the best. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite poems, The Way It Is by William Stafford.

Good luck,

Mrinan

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and

you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford

The same day, I saw this heading in Rod Dreher’s blog: AI dude goes full McGilchrist. The piece referred to this same letter.

Then I open the Times newspaper this morning and find the headline: ‘The world is in peril’: AI researchers quit with public warnings, referring in particular to Mrinank Sharma leaving Anthropic and Zoë Hitzig leaving OpenAI.

So, in short, much to say, but I shall confine myself to saying ‘ well done them’. I hope they make a considerable impact. I hope their courageous stand will be emulated by many AI workers. If any of you think you might, but have doubts, now is the time to act while it still has impact and before it is too late.