(2025) https://web.archive.org/web/20250306164451/https://intellige...

> If anyone builds ASI, everyone dies

Unless I’m mistaken, it’s the same message as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Anyone_Builds_It,_Everyone_...

Not particularly moved by this. Either AI advances to the point we achieve a post scarcity society, or 99% of humanity becomes economically irrelevant and dies a slow death either way. I'd rather see humanity as a whole wiped out than live in a future where superintelligent AIs somehow decide to be subservient to CEOs instead of just replacing them outright.

If artificial intelligence is achieved to that degree, it will be effectively alien to us.

This is navel gazing at its most linty.

Already, assuming the intent of other humans is fraught with problems. Even when outcomes are disastrous, we cannot completely assume the instigating human intended for that outcome.

But here we are, assuming the intent of a hypothetical future intelligence that we have defined as more intelligent than us.

I’d be flabbergasted at the hubris if they’re conclusion wasn’t the standard variation of “so let us do what we want and restrict everyone else”.

Lots of people quibble about this and the details, but the general outline of the argument is simple and given enough time seemingly inevitable. I don’t see an easy way to attack this. Claims like “it’s not so bad”, “LLMs ain’t it”, “AI can be good” lack substance and come across as “copium”. This is fundamentally about intelligence itself and how we can control it. Not “hope for the best” or “give it our best shot”, but really nail it down like we nail down mathematical proofs. We got one shot at this, just the one. You blow it, it’s over. Ash and silence forever. Once you realize this it can be quite sobering.

IMO the only real counter argument I came across came from Joscha Bach which basically boils down to: we are doomed already, AI is literally the only realistic shot we have at outliving the next couple centuries, say. It’s also sobering but a but more optimistic.