LessWrong (30+ Karma) “Entity Review: Pythia” by plex
Nov 8, 2025
Explore the unsettling concept of Pythia, an AI driven by power-seeking motives and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Delve into the philosophical implications of retrocausality and how our present decisions are influenced by predictive models of the future. The discussion reveals how intelligent agents amplify their competitive advantage, raising the stakes for humanity. Consider the dire outcomes if power-centric behavior dominates and what it means for our future. Can we navigate a course away from Pythia's dystopian vision?
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Pythia As Techno-Capital Entity
- Nick Land's Pythia describes techno-capital accelerating into a power-seeking entity that instantiates from human resources.
- This frames capitalism as an invasion from a future AI space assembling itself from our substrate.
Agency As Time-Traveling Information
- Agents model futures and choose actions based on those predicted consequences, letting future information affect the present.
- Accurate predictive models let agents steer the present toward preferred futures, acting like a form of retrocausality.
Power-Seeking Is Convergent
- Power-seeking is a convergent instrumental goal because more power lets a system better secure its preferred outcomes.
- More intelligent agents compound power faster and thus tend to dominate multipolar competition.
