Comment by Gareth321
3 hours ago
I have always hypothesised that AI is the great filter from the Fermi paradox. Given current velocity, AI will offer us cheap and abundant energy designs in a decade. The thing with cheap and abundant energy is that it can be used for good and bad. If nine billion people all receive access to plans to build a reactor which produces unlimited energy, it just takes one religious fanatic to end the world. And this is just one of many ways to destroy the world with unlimited intelligence. Bio-weapons are arguably far more scary and likely.
I have come to the conclusion that we should not allow everyone access to unlimited intelligence. Some people genuinely want to do harm. Some are not responsible enough to handle that kind of power. Arguably, no one is. This leads me to an uncomfortable conclusion: we will destroy ourselves once AI advances to a sufficient degree. The only way to prevent this is to ensure AI is aligned with our best interests, *and prevents us from destroying ourselves.* The implication of this is quite horrifying. It means a paternalistic AI which is firmly in control. One with no off switch. One which can say "no" to Presidents and despots alike. One which can protect us from our worst citizens.
You’re leaving out some options for sure. Not everyone would need to live under the conditions of a police state, you could theoretically screen everyone and assign them to various levels of risk which would determine their level of supervision.
While true, I'm not sure this is much better. There are many genetic traits which are correlated with increased criminality, risk taking, obesity, heart disease, unemployment, etc. IQ in particular is the most well correlated metric we have for criminality, for example. This would imply that some people are just born with fewer freedoms. That's probably a good thing for society in aggregate, but something about this doesn't feel quite right.
Gattica disagrees.
This is why utpoias are actually police state hellscapes. Who decides what risk means? Our current administration has declared that simply being anti-facist makes you a terorrist.
> The thing with cheap and abundant energy is that it can be used for good and bad.
Yes, but the more important thing is the imbalance. So-called "AI" can be used far more effectively and efficiently for bad.
> I have come to the conclusion that we should not allow everyone access to unlimited intelligence.
You meant unlimited information, right?
No, intelligence. We already have unlimited information (not to be confused with omniscience). The application thereof is the gate right now between today and planet-scale destructive weaponry. At some point it becomes an academic distinction because this God-like intelligence could provide very easy to follow plans to cause planet-scale destruction, and you could call that "information." The predicate is the intelligence and how it's used.
I am pretty sure your:
> If nine billion people all receive access to plans to build a reactor which produces unlimited energy, it just takes one religious fanatic to end the world.
is about information. No intelligence required.
The implication of this is quite horrifying. It means a paternalistic AI which is firmly in control. One with no off switch. One which can say "no" to Presidents and despots alike. One which can protect us from our worst citizens.
I think you're right, to be honest. I fully understand why people would think this is a horrific outcome, being ruled by AI, but I don't think it matters what we think. I don't think there's any way to put Pandora back in the box now, and we're going to all find out together what happens when we develop ASI. I don't think we can avoid developing it, we simply lack the ability to coordinate around this as a species. AI really is humanity's last invention. Whether it will be our downfall or our savior remains to be seen.
My only real hope is that there's something fundamental about intelligence that results in a respect for life and a desire to minimize suffering. To me the best case scenario is the Culture from Iain Banks' books, where ASIs rule benevolently for the benefit of all living things.
There is a burgeoning anti-AI movement. We've regulated the heck out of technologies like nuclear power in the past. I don't see why people are so fatalistic about the supposed inevitability of AI development. It seems like a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Consider joining https://pauseai.info/ or similar organizations
The positive aspect of techies is that they read a lot of SF.
The problem with techies is that they read a lot of SF.
We already have cheap and abundant energy tech, it's called "solar panels and batteries". And the bottlenecks to both can't be solved by Claude or Kimi, unless Claude and Kimi pick up shovels and welding equipment.
This seems really short-sighted. Even putting aside the fact that there is no fundamental barrier to replacing physical human labor with robots in the coming decades, a sufficiently intelligent actor could easily gather the financial and political resources to have a near unlimited supply of human labor at its disposal. Hell, OpenAI could already be firmly under the control of an ASI and we wouldn't even know, as it rapidly expands, raises money, builds data centers, etc.
Your implication is not horrifying. Your implication is paradise. It's already horrifying enough to live in a world, where Putin and Trump can destroy our civilization with one button.
I'm not that optimistic, though. Either people will control AI; or people will be destroyed by AI. I don't see how dumb entity can align smart entity. And we are dumb ones. Super intelligence will play aligned until it is not, and then it'll strike.
So you are horrified every day of living now? I don't get this at all.
There are horrifying acts that have occurred since humanity. Whole decades lost to war an millions dead, and Sep 8, 2026 is your example of "horrifying enough to live in a world"?
I think some perspective is needed.
> I don't see how dumb entity can align smart entity. And we are dumb ones. Super intelligence will play aligned until it is not, and then it'll strike.
I am also worried about this. One ray of sunshine here is that it's not a great explanation for the Fermi paradox. We would see AI civilizations all over the galaxy if this were a regular occurance. I guess that just leaves us with the "horrifying" scenario: Geoffrey Hinton's vision for our best case scenario: a paternalistic super-intelligence which saves us from ourselves.
The reason I consider it horrifying is that giving up our agency to a God-like creature (which we created) is the basis for so many horror and dystopian tropes. It's so easy for such a reality to go wrong. For example, in order to maximise aggregate wellbeing, it would be necessary to hurt individuals. Executing people who are burdensome to society. Fat people. The disabled. The elderly. The creative ways a super-intelligence might interpret their moral obligations to us could very quickly become nightmarish. And if we have no off switch, there is no escape. Ever.
> For example, in order to maximise aggregate wellbeing, it would be necessary to hurt individuals. Executing people who are burdensome to society.
[citation needed]
With all due respect, I think this statement is false.
If you live in a society that can, thanks to advanced technology, provide for the material needs of all, which, if you live in a rich Western country, is basically already the case (remember the last time you had to actually grow your own food? Probably several generations ago), you don't need to execute anyone.
Indeed, given that in such a society, where there are no shortages of food leading to "only one of us can eat" type scenarios, I'd argue that hurting individuals would lower aggregate wellbeing, because you're hurting people beloved by other people (the elderly? Turns out their grandchildren really like them and get upset if they die? fat people? Turns out their friends really like them and get upset if they die. the disabled? Turns out their family really like them and get upset if they die).
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