> LLMs are humanity's "first contact" with non-animal intelligence.
I'd say corporations are also a form of non-animal intelligence, so it's not exactly first contact. In some ways, LLMs are less alien, in other ways they're more.
There is an alignment problem for both of them. Perhaps the lesson to be drawn from the older alien intelligence is that the most impactful aspect of alignment is how the AI's benefits for humanity are distributed and how they impact politics.
Also: democracy, capitalism/the global economy, your HOA, a tribe, etc etc
Even a weather system is a kind of computational process and “intelligent” in a way
The tweets don't age well in hindsight but sometimes there are technologies which feel like they might break through but never do. Having been bullish on the concept of NFTs doesn't make a strong argument for or against having good intuition of breakthrough innovation.