The church of e/acc

Hi everyone, it’s Ellen in San Francisco. If someone calls you a “decel,” it’s probably meant as an insult. But first...Three things you nee [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Ellen Huet]( Hi everyone, it’s Ellen in San Francisco. If someone calls you a “decel,” it’s probably meant as an insult. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Elon Musk’s xAI [seeks to raise $1 billion]( • TikTok has an [e-commerce plan for Indonesia]( • Meta and IBM joined an [open-source AI alliance]( ‘A form of spirituality’ There’s a new cultural divide splitting Silicon Valley in two. Are you an accelerationist or a decel? The accelerationists want to speed up technological progress, especially related to artificial intelligence. This group of entrepreneurs, investors and technologists have adopted the label “e/acc,” which stands for [effective accelerationism](. The term is a reference to — and a rebuke of — effective altruism, a philanthropic movement that has, in recent years, become [obsessed]( with making sure AI is built safely so that it doesn’t go rogue and obliterate humanity. Sam Bankman-Fried, the most infamous EA, expressed such concerns. Some EAs want to regulate and even [halt]( AI development. E/accs (pronounced “ee-ack”) don’t want to slow things down. Anyone who does is standing in the way of progress — a decel. Those who have become convinced that AI development should decelerate for the safety of humanity are “safetypilled.” The tech industry loves its jargon. The e/acc movement has some major supporters, including Y Combinator President Garry Tan and billionaire investor Marc Andreessen, who posted a very, very long [manifesto]( in October about techno-optimism. According to his essay, the movement abhors ideas such as “existential risk,” “sustainability” and “ESG.” To be an e/acc is to declare oneself aggressively and unapologetically pro-tech. After years of public backlash against big tech companies — about misinformation, antitrust and data privacy — e/acc has become a rallying cry for a backlash to the backlash. The recent leadership tumult at OpenAI Inc. emboldened the e/accs. Many of them loudly denounced the company’s original board members and celebrated Sam Altman when he was reinstated as chief executive officer. There’s even a divide forming among pro-tech VCs. When General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja [posted]( on the social network X a commitment to “responsible” AI development, other VCs criticized him. “No thank you,” [wrote]( Andrew Chen, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. The accelerationist movement is thriving on X, formerly known as Twitter, where supporters put e/acc in their profile names and retweet the droll and sometimes bombastic posts of two pseudonymous e/acc leaders, @bayeslord and @BasedBeffJezos. Beff Jezos’ real identity wasn’t widely known until Friday, when Forbes [published]( an article identifying him as Guillaume Verdon, a former Google quantum computing engineer and a founder of an AI hardware startup. Now that one of the leading faces of e/acc has been unmasked, the group’s ideas — some of them deeply unsettling — will face further examination. Verdon, whom Andreessen [called]( a “patron saint of techno-optimism,” [wrote]( that he considers himself “post-humanist” — that is, open to the idea that natural selection could lead AI to replace us as the dominant species. “In order to spread to the stars, the light of consciousness/intelligence will have to be transduced to non-biological substrates,” he wrote. For now, though, Verdon has been enjoying some very human aspects of building the e/acc movement — connection and meaning. At first, when he started tweeting and gaining followers, “it was just feeding my Twitter addiction and felt like a fun video game,” he said on a recent [podcast](. “But at the same time, I found a sense of community.” He also extolled the e/acc mantra that “we’re going to make the better future happen.” That feeling of contributing to something greater “gives you that infinite dopamine well to grind through the long nights, to skip the holiday dinners, to just file more IP and put in the hours,” he said. “E/acc, at this point, is almost like a form of spirituality.” —[Ellen Huet](mailto:ehuet4@bloomberg.net) The big story AI could add as much as $340 billion a year to Wall Street’s profits, McKinsey said. Generative AI tools could eventually [replace repetitive tasks for most human workers](, the consulting firm said. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology TV analysis]( of Grand Theft Auto VI. Get fully charged Dutch chip company ASM will build a new $324 million [headquarters in Arizona](. Airbnb tasked its CFO with overseeing business strategy, [including overseas expansion](. Amazon must promise to rank robot vacuum cleaners fairly in its store, a UK watchdog said in response to the company’s [proposal to acquire the Roomba maker iRobot](. On the latest episode of Elon, Inc., reporters discuss Musk’s political alliances after his declaration that he [wouldn’t vote for Joe Biden, and isn’t a big fan of Donald Trump either.]( More from Bloomberg Get Bloomberg Tech weeklies in your inbox: - [Cyber Bulletin]( for coverage of the shadow world of hackers and cyber-espionage - [Game On]( for reporting on the video game business - [Power On]( for Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more - [Screentime]( for a front-row seat to the collision of Hollywood and Silicon Valley - [Soundbite]( for reporting on podcasting, the music industry and audio trends - [Q&AI]( for answers to all your questions about AI Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Tech Daily newsletter. 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