Meditations on Moloch the Machine God

* Book: Meditations on Moloch. Scott Alexander.

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Context

Alexander Beiner:

"Moloch The Machine God

Google and Microsoft are in an arms race to create something that could not only destroy the information commons, but potentially all of humanity. Both they and the fish farmers are caught in what’s called a multi-polar trap. A race-to-the bottom situation in which, even though individual actors might have the best of intentions, the incentive structures mean that everyone ends up worse off, and the commons is damaged or destroyed in the process. In his seminal essay ‘Meditations on Moloch’, Scott Alexander personified this universal conundrum in our society as ‘Moloch’. Moloch was a Canaanite god of war, a god people sacrificed their children to for material success. I’ve written about Moloch several times before, and I think Liv Boeree’s explanation from a piece I wrote about psychedelic capitalism is one of the best I’ve heard:

- If there’s a force that’s driving us toward greater complexity, there seems to be an opposing force, a force of destruction that uses competition for ill. The way I see it, Moloch is the god of unhealthy competition, of negative sum games.

Understanding Moloch is crucial for understanding what we’re facing with Artificial Intelligence. Firstly, it reminds us that all AI research is embedded in a socio-economic system that is divorced from anything deeper than winning its own game. We might call on a halt to research, or ask for coordination around ethics, but it’s a tall order. It just takes one actor not to play (to not turn off their metaphorical fish filter), and everyone else is forced into the multi-polar trap."

(https://beiner.substack.com/p/reality-eats-culture-for-breakfast?)