Superintelligent AI could still kill us
Outside the AI company Anthropic’s offices in San Francisco, a guy is on a hunger strike. He’s been there two weeks. Another was doing something similar outside Google DeepMind in London, but never quite hit his straps: he started tweeting about it on the first day, which seems a grandiose way of saying “I skipped breakfast”, and then gave up after doctors told him it was dangerous — a surprise to those of us who rather thought that was the point.
Jokes aside, the intention is to stop the tech companies from building superintelligent AI, which they say “threatens to destroy life on Earth”. But here’s the thing: if these protesters believe that superintelligent AI has a high chance of killing everyone, then they’re not overreacting. If anything, they’re underreacting. Since I, too, think that there is a non-trivial chance of AI killing everyone, I should really be applauding them, not sneering.
