Effective accelerationism
Effective accelerationism (e/acc) is a 21st-century ideological movement that advocates for accelerating AI development as rapidly as possible, favoring baseline humanity's intellectual, moral, cultural, spiritual, and social obsolescence through artificial intelligence or transhumanism.[1] During the Second Donald Trump administration, it has influenced the executive policy of the United States on artificial intelligence.[2][3][4] The movement calls for developing superintelligence, an intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest, rapidly while opposing much of AI safety.[4]
Nick Land is the intellectual originator of contemporary effective accelerationism, and accelerationism more broadly.[5][6] Land wove together ideas from the occult, cybernetics, science fiction, and poststructuralist philosophy to describe what he saw as the phenomena of technocapitalist acceleration.[7] The earliest known reference to the movement can be traced back to a May 2022 newsletter published by four pseudonymous authors.[5] Its proponents believe that unrestricted technological progress in artificial intelligence is a moral good.[8] The movement carries utopian undertones and advocates for AI progress, while differing on ideal outcomes.[9] A faction promotes AI successionism, favoring the extinction or radical disempowerment of humanity by artificial intelligence; others favor transhumanist ideals, favoring changes to the human genome to become god-like.[10] High-profile figures in both Silicon Valley and the Second Donald Trump administration, including Marc Andreessen and Garry Tan, have endorsed it by adding "e/acc" to their public social media profiles.[5][6] It has been criticized as cult-like, elitist, and favoring humanity's disempowerment.[11][6][12][13]
Etymology and central beliefs
[edit]Effective accelerationism, a portmanteau of "effective altruism" and "accelerationism",[11] is a fundamentally techno-optimist movement.[14] According to Guillaume Verdon, one of the movement's founders, its aim is for human civilization to "clim[b] the Kardashev gradient", meaning its purpose is for human civilization to rise to next levels on the Kardashev scale by maximizing energy usage.[14]
To achieve this goal, effective accelerationism wants to accelerate technological progress. It is strongly focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI), because it sees AGI as fundamental for climbing the Kardashev scale.[14] The movement therefore advocates for unrestricted development and deployment of artificial intelligence.[15] Regulation of artificial intelligence and government intervention in markets more generally is met with opposition. Many of its proponents have libertarian views and think that AGI will be most aligned if many AGIs compete against each other on the marketplace.[14] The founders of the movement see it as rooted in Jeremy England's theory on the origin of life, which is focused on entropy and thermodynamics.[14] According to them, the universe aims to increase entropy, and life is a way of increasing it. By spreading life throughout the universe and making life use up ever increasing amounts of energy, the universe's purpose would thus be fulfilled.[14]
History
[edit]Intellectual origins
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Nick Land is the intellectual originator of contemporary accelerationism in general.