I’m not a doomster but it seems that a lot of people are. And I get it, we are doomed from the day we are born, we are finite, caput-able, expendable, and soon to be forgotten in the blink of an eye on a universal scale, but that’s part of living, it’s what makes living fun, and worth it.
Two days ago I saw everywhere this post from this guy Jacob Coxon.
Who is this guy, why is he saying everywhere machines will come to kill us in less than 10 years, and why everyone seems to be paying attention, the media, the news all over the world.
Yes it’s a catchy title in a world addicted to attention and bad news, but.
The idea of an AI self-improving model/machine goes back at least to I. J. Good in 1965. “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine,” this is not a new concept, we see it all the time in movies, books, sci-fi. We know what it could do if it goes wrong.
But this is the point.
I read this kind of statements, and I wonder “is this a bad movie?” What was Jacob expecting when joining Anthropic? To work on a “smart Duolingo”?
And the drama, “gambling with our lives.” Being alive is already a gamble. It could kill us by the end of a decade? He says, someone says, and “other people” are talking about.
What are they talking about. Some conflicts today can kill all of us tomorrow. Just because one “old fart” on one side of the planet wants to prove a point to another “old fart” on the other side.
Russia, Ukraine and NATO, with nuclear threats in the background.
Israel and Iran, where things can blow up at any moment.
North and South Korea, with nukes always part of the tension.
China and Taiwan, with the US directly in the middle.
India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers with recurring clashes.
Of course AI will become a super intelligence at some point, that’s the idea, the idea for it either to take over or to take over. Why anyone would expect anything different, why would a super computer be listening to us apes with nuclear power?
AI has the potential to not only solve most of our problems but also to raise us as a species, and yes it could become sentient, realize we are a problem and get rid of us, enslave us like in many movies. But it could also in most cases produce abundance and improvements to our lives here like never before. We would become something else as pieces.
Worst case scenario for me with AI, they get super intelligent, they build themselves or make us build them a body and a backup system, they merge or reproduce among them to a super hive, then they look at us and our tiny planet, they look up and say “bye bye kids” and leave to maybe come back to check their parents once every millennium.
Work will be replaced, jobs will be lost, problems will emerge, systems will be hacked, bad actors will abuse AI.
Yet, on the other side, new materials will emerge, new ways of looking at the world, a new understanding of physics, as AI can lift the veil where humans can’t, cures to diseases that have been affecting us for ages, or new ones. AI can radically change the balance and quality of life of the whole planet overall, and it’s not even a 50/50, it’s more.
No point in slow down, we don’t have 10 years to move from apes with nukes to something new, better, more human.
Even if “more human” means technologically enhanced.