I don’t think “human beings should burn themselves to learn.” Yes, we learn from mistakes and failures, and I think we have already seen how technology developments have their risks pegged to them.

I also think that in the grand scheme of things, we have “burned our hands” plenty of times and we still don’t seem to care because “the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Also, I like David Friedberg’s argument where he says that you can do as much as you can to slow it down, but it’s already too late because of the amount of open source models available. I think a fair comparison could be the black market. You can do as much as you want against it: regulate it, slow it down, etc… it will be there and there will be demand for it.

I admire Jeffrey, but saying that we’d be better off without having invented the technology is an easy and clickbait thing to say. Just like saying we’d be better off without drugs, factory farming, cars, etc… you can say this about many many things.

I think that what’s important is seeing the writing on the wall, acknowledge that both really good things can happen as much as really bad things and ensure humanity as a whole does not suffer the consequences. Unfortunately, history has demonstrated that’s never the case and us mere mortals are the ones that will suffer the consequences.