Someone is wrong on the internet. Wrong enough, in fact, to lure me from my hitherto perpetual lurk.

Of course, the meme is (was) funny (amusing) because the people of the internet are often wrong — and often in sillier ways than the instance that has so exercised me here. The nuance in this case, however, is that the mistaken man is one upon whose whim our species’ future plausibly depends. Unfortunate!

See, Sam Altman declared last week that ‘terrorists should have access to unlimited genius to direct however they can imagine’. Or was it ‘baby-killers should have access to unlimited genius to direct however they can imagine’? Never mind, it was both. Indeed, the exact quote was that ‘everyone should have access to unlimited genius to direct however they can imagine’. (‘Everyone’ entails ‘terrorists’ and ‘baby-killers’, ergo…)

Please do not take me for a pedant. Rest assured, I would not be moved to such an undignified début over a simple slip-of-the-tongue. I am not looking to be uncharitable, either.^[1] There are surely times when ‘everyone’ straightforwardly does not mean everyone. He obviously didn’t mean literally everyone, I hear you cry. StrAw MAn!!

I’ve no doubt that Altman would prefer a world where everyone except terrorists, baby-killers and their ilk were furnished with ‘unlimited genius’ on-demand. My point is that this is not a choice you get to make. Sam’s candour here has done us a service.^[2] ‘Everyone’ really is what he means — or, rather, it is all he reasonably can mean — and a more dexterous choice of words would have served only to obscure that fact.

One way to view technological progress is as an indiscriminate amplifier. An increase in technological level delivers a corresponding increase in capacity for impact. This sounds almost tautological, and at the very least trite. But it matters, because ‘capacity for impact’ is a neutral term. Progress is an ‘indiscriminate amplifier’ in that it augments impacts in all directions. There are good people in the world, and our present technological level means those good people are better equipped than ever to do good things. But there are also bad people. And there are people who think they are being good but are accidentally being bad.

‘Genius’ works the same way. My genius can be wielded for vile and virtuous ends, and my capacity to achieve those ends is not insignificantly a function ...

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