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The TV show Loot, in Season 2 Episode 1, introduces a SBF-type character named Noah Hope DeVore, who is a billionaire wonderkid who invents "analytic altruism", which uses an algorithm to determine "the most statistically optimal ways" of saving lives and naturally comes up with malaria nets. However, Noah is later arrested by the FBI for wire fraud and various other financial offenses.

I wonder if anyone else will getting a thinly veiled counterpart -- given that the lead character of the show seems somewhat based on MacKenzie Scott, this seems to be maybe a thing for the show.

If we are taking Transformative AI (TAI) to be creating a transformation at the scale of the industrial revolution ... has anyone thought about what "aligning" the actual 1760-1820 industrial revolution might've looked like or what it could've meant for someone living in 1720 to work to ensure that the 1760-1820 industrial revolution was beneficial instead of harmful to humanity?

I guess the analogy might break down though given that the industrial revolution was still well within human control but TAI might easily not be, or that TAI might involve more discrete/fast/discontinuous takeoffs whereas the industrial revolution was rather slow/continuous, or at least slow/continuous enough that we'd expect humans born in 1740 to reasonably adapt to the new change in progress without being too bewildered.

This is similar to, but I think still a bit distinct from, asking the question of "what would a longtermist EA in the 1600s have done?" ...A question I still think is interesting but many EAs I know are not all that interested, probably because our time periods are just too disanalogous.

Some people at FHI have had random conversations about this, but I don't think any serious work has been done to address the question.

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