from Hacker News

AI and Esoteric Fascism

by bertman on 2/28/25, 9:11 AM with 1 comments

  • by Ukv on 2/28/25, 11:04 AM

    > The “AI” field as a whole has bought into racist ideas on intelligence born out of eugenics [...] Shane Legg, co-founder of DeepMind [...] cited [Linda Gottfredson's] definition of intelligence in the introduction to his 2008 PhD thesis

    The definition in question is: "Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience."

    While the source is problematic, the definition taken from it seems fairly standard and widely cited (and it's not even the one Legg goes with - it's just in a section called "More definitions of human intelligence").

    > [Effective Altruism/etc. push for] an ideal future outcome for the selected inheritors of humanity by both making horrendous sacrifices in the present and by investing in those who are inherently superior and are destined to inherit. Coupled with the inherent white supremacy of the eugenics movement, it amounts to accepting mass death in the present to make a better world for white people.

    Isn't effective altruism largely based on the idea that we should find the most effective ways to benefit others without bias towards our own ingroups? Charities I see them supporting[0] are along the lines of malaria prevention and deworming, almost all in third-world countries.

    Not to say that it's without issue or beyond criticism, but it feels like a huge unevidenced leap to say it's about accepting mass death to the benefit of white people.

    > [...] have Gnostic influences, which was popular in Esoteric Neo-Nazi movements. Specifically both build on the idea that the material world is an illusion (or simulation) [...] I believe that the current “AI” bubble is an outright Neo-Nazi project

    Again this seems like a stretch; a strong conclusion from a chain of tenuous hand-wavy connections.

    If you want to connect AI to fascism, I'd look more at its applications for surveillance, facial recongition[1], social scoring, etc.

    [0]: https://airtable.com/appGuFtOIb1eodoBu/shr1EzngorAlEzziP/tbl...

    [1]: https://restofworld.org/2024/facial-recognition-government-p...