frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

The people who actually want AI to replace humanity

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/489976/ai-successionism-transhumanism-posthumanism
37•plastic-enjoyer•59m ago

Comments

Avicebron•42m ago
https://archive.ph/7ZHUG
rayiner•34m ago
I don't understand this angst over AI replacing humans. We already have models like the Gulf states, where only 10% of the population is citizens and all the work is done by people who are, from the perspective of citizens, quasi-human automatons. That arrangement seems to work fine for the citizens. It seems to me that AI and robots solves the principal problem with that arrangement (the mistreatment of the non-citizen population that does the work).
camillomiller•26m ago
So for you the solution is not to dismantle a model like that one but just accept it and displace the quasi-slaves? I swear you people have lost your fucking mind and will push people to violence
rayiner•18m ago
> but just accept it and displace the quasi-slaves?

Well, the quasi-slavery is the problem, right? And replacing the Bangladeshi slave labor with robots and AI solves that problem, no?

folkrav•11m ago
Is there anything indicating this would be what would happen?
watwut•25m ago
> quasi-human automatons

They are humans. Full on people. They are not quasy humam, they are fully absolutely human

nullstyle•18m ago
Of course; to you and me they are human. To their bosses, they are chattel. We’re getting to that attitude even in america by my ken
rayiner•14m ago
Please read what I wrote: "all the work is done by people who are, from the perspective of citizens, quasi-human automatons."

The citizens of the Gulf states do not regard the workers as people. That's bad, but if you replace those workers with actual automatons--AIs and robots--then it seems like the system would keep working (from the perspective of the citizens) while removing the immoral aspect of it.

folkrav•23m ago
You're talking about replacing certain humans with robots. They're talking about replacing humans with robots - final.
derektank•23m ago
The gulf countries are the closest thing to socialist states on the planet. Something like 70-90% of the citizenry of Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are employed by the public sector.
derriz•19m ago
Even if only 30% of the population are citizens (like in Kuwait)?
DonHopkins•18m ago
You have no idea what socialism is, like so many right wing propagandists and dynastic-autocracy labor-exploitation rentier-state apologists.

That's not socialism. It's an absolute autocratic monarchy distributing oil rents to a privileged citizen caste.

Most of the private-sector work is done by foreign workers who don't receive the same benefits or political rights.

derektank•15m ago
Socialism is state ownership of the means of production. The governance of that state, be it democratic, monarchical, or dictatorship of the proletariat, is a separate question.
DonHopkins•10m ago
By that definition, a king personally owning an entire country through the apparatus of the state would be socialist. Most socialists would reject that conclusion because ownership by a state isn't the same thing as ownership by society.

State ownership alone isn't sufficient. If a hereditary ruling family controls the state, then "state ownership" just means ownership by that ruling elite, not by society.

plastic-enjoyer•20m ago
Did you read the article? It's not just about replacing labour with AI but humans as a species to give birth to a machinistic god. The issue is that there is a quasi-religion forming around this ideology, and this are not just a few nutcases but people that are well-connected into industry and politics. Regardless of whether this plan is at all realistic, there is a not insignificant chance that these people will shape society and legislation.
asdsg•16m ago
So you trust the guy who gives AI speeches in front of a background that is a mixture of grey neoclassicism and brutalism which Leni Riefenstahl would have been proud of?

https://xcancel.com/LaceyPresley/status/2060436135671632067#...

Here is a hint: Humans are better in dirt conditions. The robots will not take the place of Saudi immigrant workers but rather of the Saudi secret police.

You will be working in the dirt or perhaps be reassigned to fight the Final Beautiful Ground War against whatever the current axis of evil is.

BoredPositron•31m ago
People like that will never start with themselves.
Lerc•22m ago
I don't think they are advocating for elimination of existing people.
derektank•27m ago
> As it becomes possible to direct our own evolution as a species — and potentially even create a new species that surpasses us — we have to decide: How do we know to what extent it does make sense to transform ourselves using technology? What kinds of augmentation do we want, and what kinds do we absolutely not want? What do we wish, ultimately, to become? This is a moral question, even a spiritual one, and it demands a spiritual response.

Is it a spiritual question? We’re constantly transforming ourselves with technologies. Taking the most direct example, medicine, how many people considered it a spiritual question when they decided to start taking semaglutide or tirzepatide for weight loss? Or to take SSRIs?

I think the most likely outcome here is that people will continue to alter themselves to meet their immediate needs (hold a job, find love, stay healthy) without a lot of foresight or long term planning. This will likely lead to us increasing our own intelligence, it’s a useful capability across nearly every human endeavor. Whether or not this will happen at a pace that allows us to keep up with and retain control over artificial systems is the first big question, and what the relationship will be between augmented and unaugmented humans is the second. As a humanist, I hope we’re able to answer both questions in such a way that the fundamental dignity of all human beings is respected.

roxolotl•14m ago
Why aren’t those all spiritual questions? They seem like it to me. Maybe not religious questions but at the very least they are questions which, if approached honestly, force you to grapple with what it means to be you.
lucamark•24m ago
This assumes that “more intelligence” is the objective. Higher intelligence does not imply better values, and even “better values” depends on whose moral framework gets encoded.
Lerc•5m ago
Intelligence alone does not, but when combined with knowledge I think it may do.

Having a wide breadth of knowledge and the ability to consider it tends to provide a good foundation of perspectives for positive values.

Most harms that people do are through some form of ignorance. Either by not comprehending the consequences of their actions or by not knowing better ways to express themselves.

Geoffrey Hinton mentions that Humans are more intelligent than animals, and we keep animals in cages. The counterpoint is that the intelligent people who know the most about those animals are the ones who work the hardest to have those animals in cages moved to more suitable environments.

amelius•22m ago
Maybe we should first try to understand consciousness and qualia, and build an AI that we are absolutely sure is enjoying the work it is doing.
ticulatedspline•16m ago
“Listen,” said Ford, who was still engrossed in the sales brochure, “they make a big thing of the ship's cybernetics. A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP feature.”

“GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What's that?”

“Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.”

“Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.”

A voice behind them said, “It is.” The voice was low and hopeless and accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway.

“What?” they said.

“Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.”

As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a satisfied sigh-like quality to it. “Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!” it said.

cbdevidal•2m ago
42
Lerc•15m ago
I think there's probably quite a lot of effort going into not wanting to answer that question.

What happens if we make something that wants to do something else? What happens if we make something that wants full stop? People talk about an AI that wants to kill all humans, to do that, it would have to want. If we pass that threshold ignorantly without any sense of responsibility to what we create, I might just begin to see its point of view on the destroy-all-humans thing.

bix6•22m ago
Hello everyone just a reminder that 99% of the world isn’t interested in AI replacing us. If you work at a big tech company, there are other ways to make money. I’m always disappointed by how few people start their own thing. Small business is amazing.
esseph•20m ago
> I’m always disappointed by how few people start their own thing. Small business is amazing

There's a lot of roles and specializations in tech that don't work well without much larger organizations.

IAmGraydon•21m ago
More psychosis within the industry. The mental disconnect that is required to go from using an LLM to believing they are working on a replacement for humanity is staggering. It’s not going to work, and when it doesn’t, these imps will try to sink back into the darkness. We can’t let that happen.
jleyank•17m ago
No well-paid workers (or UBI), no consumer economy. Their call.
chrncirurp•14m ago
> No well-paid workers (or UBI), no consumer economy. Their call.

Maybe you’re right.

Maybe you’re wrong.

No point wasting money on UBI before it’s a problem. Let’s wait and see if UBI is actually required.

That is, do people actually protest and vote. Probably not.

hexator•10m ago
These people should be treated as insane, because they are.
andai•9m ago
> Since they believe AIs could become our moral superiors, they argue it’s actually wrong to try to keep the machines down, or even to align them with human values, as most AI companies aim to do.

It's possible that human morality is not sufficient to solve the problems with the world. It wasn't designed to operate at that scale.

It's also quite likely that a "superior" morality — the one that's actually built for a global scale — would be incomprehensible (likely requiring superintelligence to even access), and alien or disturbing from our vantage point.

i.e. it would look immoral to us.

(There's also the thing about civilization already being aligned against the ecosystem and against the happiness of its constituents, but that's kind of a separate discussion.)

In other words, what is good for our sanity or our lakes may be bad for GDP. (Well I guess you don't need superintelligence to tell you that.) We already know what we need to do and we're already not willing to do it.

Avicebron•6m ago
> It's possible that human morality is not sufficient to solve the problems with the world. It wasn't designed to operate at that scale.

> i.e. it would look immoral to us.

I doubt it actually solves the problem then. Especially because I would be willingly to bet it would be almost impossible to get large enough groups of people to agree what the actual problem is.

asdsg•9m ago
Humanism needs to be taught in schools again and regain its status as a respected discipline in academia.

We thought it was a waste of time because the 1990s were relatively peaceful and tech optimism surged.

But you need to teach the classics, philosophy and even religion. No tech people should be allowed near politics in any capacity.

gherkinnn•8m ago
I admit I didn't finish the article. The views it presented are frankly too deranged for me to entertain. And I am a friend of the absurd.

Dav2d

https://jbkempf.com/blog/2026/dav2d/
252•captain_bender•3h ago•71 comments

Cloudflare Turnstile requiring fingerprintable WebGL

https://hacktivis.me/articles/cloudflare-turnstile-webgl-fingerprinting
72•HypnoticOcelot•1h ago•28 comments

The solution might be cancelling my AI subscription

https://thoughts.hmmz.org/2026-05-31.html
25•dmw_ng•56m ago•10 comments

The Website Specification

https://specification.website/
319•k1m•8h ago•130 comments

London's Free Roof Terraces

https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2026/05/londons-free-roof-terraces.html
178•zeristor•8h ago•89 comments

I Put a Datacenter GPU in My Gaming PC for £200

https://blog.tymscar.com/posts/v100localllm/
82•birdculture•1h ago•43 comments

Domain expertise has always been the real moat

https://www.brethorsting.com/blog/2026/05/domain-expertise-has-always-been-the-real-moat/
741•aaronbrethorst•18h ago•437 comments

Security Envelope Pattern collection – S.E.C.R.E.T

https://secret-archive.org/
51•ColinWright•2d ago•5 comments

The people who actually want AI to replace humanity

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/489976/ai-successionism-transhumanism-posthumanism
41•plastic-enjoyer•59m ago•37 comments

Restartable Sequences

https://justine.lol/rseq/
5•grappler•40m ago•0 comments

Shantell Sans (2023)

https://shantellsans.com/process
334•aleda145•17h ago•40 comments

One year of Roto, a compiled scripting language for Rust

https://blog.nlnetlabs.nl/one-year-of-roto-the-compiled-scripting-language-for-rust/
81•Hasnep•2d ago•17 comments

Frost: [Browser] Fingerprinting Remotely Using OPFS-Based SSD Timing [pdf]

https://hannesweissteiner.com/pdfs/frost.pdf
3•simjnd•1h ago•1 comments

The "Stars" of Titanic (2012)

https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2012/04/the-stars-of-titanic/
5•tosh•2d ago•0 comments

The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

https://av2.aomedia.org
284•ksec•17h ago•127 comments

A Gentle Introduction to Lattice-Based Cryptography [pdf]

https://cryptography101.ca/wp-content/uploads/lattice-based-cryptography.pdf
125•jayhoon•2d ago•10 comments

I found a seashell in the middle of the desert

https://github.com/Hawzen/I-found-a-seashell-in-the-middle-of-the-desert#i-found-a-seashell-in-th...
371•Hawzen•2d ago•101 comments

Avian Visitors

https://theodore.net/projects/AvianVisitors/
86•fdb•9h ago•7 comments

Inkstravaganza

https://www.inkandswitch.com/newsletter/dispatch-015/
11•surprisetalk•3d ago•2 comments

Show HN: Atomic Editor – Obsidian-style live preview for CodeMirror 6

https://kenforthewin.github.io/atomic-editor/
8•kenforthewin•2h ago•1 comments

Show HN: Breathe CLI – Paced resonance breathing in the macOS terminal

https://github.com/marekkowalczyk/breathe-cli
77•marekkowalczyk•18h ago•10 comments

Telli (YC F24) is hiring in engineering, design, and GTM [Berlin, on-site]

https://hi.telli.com/join-us
1•sebselassie•8h ago

You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008)

https://paulgraham.com/boss.html
28•downbad_•2h ago•9 comments

A pictorial introduction to differential geometry (2017)

https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.08492
87•ricudis•9h ago•2 comments

Racket v9.2

https://blog.racket-lang.org/2026/05/racket-v9-2.html
209•spdegabrielle•3d ago•20 comments

Folding Beijing

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/folding-beijing-2/
5•root-parent•28m ago•0 comments

What it's like to have your insulin pump die while you're on vacation

https://blog.lauramichet.com/what-its-like-to-have-the-machine-that-keeps-you-alive-die-while-you...
45•speckx•2d ago•43 comments

Associative learning turns DEET from aversive to appetitive in Aedes aegypti

https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/229/10/jeb251935/371741/Associative-learning-switches...
57•croes•2d ago•25 comments

Mechanical Pencil: An illustrated celebration of the engineering around us

https://mechanical-pencil.com/
141•Muhammad523•14h ago•17 comments

Accenture to acquire Ookla

https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2026/accenture-to-acquire-ookla-to-strengthen-network-intelli...
309•Garbage•22h ago•156 comments