Ah Moloch, an ancient god or anti-god who often demanded child-sacrifice. In popular culture Moloch has been figuratively used in reference to a power which demands a dire sacrifice. And in game theory Moloch has a very clear definition:
Moloch is the personification of the forces that coerce competing individuals to take actions which, although locally optimal, ultimately lead to situations where everyone is worse off. Moreover, no individual is able to unilaterally break out of the dynamic. The situation is a bad Nash equilibrium. A trap.
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/moloch#
This game theoretic Moloch lurks everywhere. This argument by poker pro Liv Boeree really made it hit home for me: Moloch: The Beauty Wars. She uses the example of beauty filters on TikTok, IG, etc. Say you’re an influencer lady known for your good looks. Basically a solid dime piece 10 in any real-world situation. So you take a selfie and post it. Thousands of likes and thirsty simps appear instantly. Every time. Which brings in money and enables your fabulous lifestyle. One booty pic at a time. Life is good. Until…
The TikTok trap
Tiktok suddenly introduces a beauty filter. But you’re insanely pretty already, so what’s the point? You dismiss it at first. But then maybe your numbers start to fall a bit. Or maybe your competitors just start to get really, really, really good-looking all of a sudden.
So one night you give it a go. You take your usual 25 selfies to find the best one. Boom, perfect. Then you click on the filter. WTF?
Suddenly the old you looks stale, old and boring. There’s one thing that you are sure of. This New You will get more likes. And there’s no harm in trying out something new right? So you post it. As does everyone else in your shoes.
Fast-forward a couple of years. Every influencer uses a filter to post something, be it a beauty filter or the newly introduced “no filter” -filter which makes you look “authentic”. Every girl on the planet is even more dissatisfied with how they look because all they post and see are filtered images. And the crazy thing? Nobody gained anything. The influencers were always playing a zero-sum game and the market didn’t grow one bit with the introduction of beauty filters. They were all forced to use it even though they didn’t want to. And every person involved is now worse off than before. THAT is motherfucking Moloch.
Literal demons
You follow now? You understand the concept? Good. Now let’s get to the juicy bit. Molochs are everywhere. This whole dumb-ass argument about capitalism vs socialism would end in a day if people were smart enough to frame the argument on Moloch vs humanity. You can play Moloch games within capitalism. You can play Moloch games within socialism. The rational mind would argue that warped incentives create Moloch games: If you need money to live then you’re quite inclined to do anything for money. And the “if we don’t do it then someone else will” -argument is born.
But rational arguments are boring. And we like to dip our toes into conspiratorial crazy territory every now and then, don’t we? If the ancients have been warning us about Moloch for literally thousands of years, I like to think there’s something there. This problem has always been with us. And the ancients invented a language to talk about it. Instead of game theory and mathematics, they told stories. If you live a virtuous life, you are shielded from demons. If you sin, you are at their mercy. Religions enshrined rules to live by, which help keep Moloch at bay. And society progressed. Slowly at first, then at an ever-increasing pace. Then we killed religion.
Everyone knows atheism has been on the rise for quite awhile. Which means you got more and more people liberated from the shackles of religion, free to explore any ideology. And those people eventually invent things. Like AI.
What would Jesus do?
I would bet quite a bit of money that THE person credited for the invention of first true AGI won’t be a religious person. Probably partly because religious people tend to be dumber. Sorry, just facts. But:
When about every super-genius from Max Tegmark, Stuart Russel, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and on and on is begging you to stop before it’s too late, you might want to listen. But they won’t. Because there’s no holy code anymore telling them what’s good or what’s bad. And if they don’t do it, the Chinese surely will. Boom, Moloch.
What’s so bad about AI then? Don’t you want an abundant utopia where machines do all the work? No, I don’t. It’s pretty well-established fact of human psychology that we need a certain amount of discomfort in our lives to help create meaning. If you take that discomfort away, you’re left with numbness, not happiness. And you know this as well as I do, if you’re old enough to remember life before the Internet.
Which is more fun: Going to a DVD-rental place with another person, browsing the shelves, debating on which movie to watch, buying some candy and walking back home to watch said movie, versus sitting on the couch with the same person browsing Netflix? Which is more rewarding to listen to: The album you place into the CD/vinyl-player with your own hands, knowing full well you’ll be listening to his album for the next hour, which you bought from the store and carried home, versus clicking on a song in Spotify? Which feels better: Talking to people, or chat-messaging people?
We know this. We’ve fucking known this for a hundred years. And yet we keep marching on. Towards “progress”. And soon, and I mean really fucking soon, like in the next 2 months, AI will start to demolish jobs that people truly enjoy. You studied 3D animation for years to finally land that job making movies? Sorry, learn to write prompts. You’ve sacrificed endless long nights climbing to the top of the corporate hierarchy in an advertising/law/medical/accounting/consulting-firm? Learn to write prompts.
Some will. And our productivity across every industry will skyrocket 10x, 100x, 1000x. But the market (demand for those services) won’t 10x. It won’t even 2X. It will 0,5X if we’re lucky, as a result of all the layoffs of white-collar workers, because there’s no way to manage a shift this enormous without a massive societal disruption.
Boom, motherfucking Moloch.
Life on the other side
So what does this abundant utopia look like? It will look like universal basic income in the places that are lucky enough to survive the coming job-apocalypse. Some governments will fall. Monetary systems will fall. Some people and corporations will became unimaginably rich. Geopolitical forces will shift in way never seen before. And it’s unstoppable. Because if we don’t do it, the Chinese surely will.
And that is the optimistic scenario. In the less optimistic scenario all humans, and all biological life will die.
Moloch. Boom?
Vaarallisia ideoita 