People often attack frontier AI labs for "hypocrisy" when the labs admit publicly that AI is an extinction threat to humanity. Often these attacks ignore the difference between various kinds of hypocrisy, some of which are good, including what I'll call "reformative hypocrisy". Attacking good kinds of hypocrisy can be actively harmful for humanity's ability to survive, and as far as I can tell we (humans) usually shouldn't do that when our survival is on the line. Arguably, reformative hypocrisy shouldn't even be called hypocrisy, due to the negative connotations of "hypocrisy". That said, bad forms of hypocrisy can disguise itself as the reformative kind for long periods, so it's important to pay enough attention to hipcrosity to actually figure out what kind it is.

Here's what I mean, by way of examples:

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0. No Hypocrisy —
Lab: "Building AGI without regulation shouldn't be allowed. Since there's no [...]

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First published:
September 11th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oRNqZwjgWSGfFdyND/reformative-hypocrisy-and-paying-close-enough-attention-to

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Reformative Hypocrisy, and Paying Close Enough Attention to Selectively Reward It. ” by Andrew_Critch

LessWrong (30+ Karma)