Comment by vbezhenar
5 hours ago
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).
I'll use a very specific example to explain my point, because I don't disagree with what you write: psychopaths. Psychopaths are 20x more prevalent among homicide offenders. Removing them from society would significantly reduce the number of homicides. It would make their friends and family sad, but this is a much smaller aggregate impact than a homicide.
This also illustrates the messy nature of comparing social good and bad. Who am I to argue that the aggregate sadness created by removing a psychopath from society is better than a homicide? Maybe the person murdered was disliked by everyone and had no friends?
I remain resolute in my premise, however, and there is a lot of theory on the issues of aggregate social good vs individualism. John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (1859) is an excellent foundation for this. This is a subjective problem to solve, meaning that the balance between individual freedom and aggregate wellbeing is different for everyone. An AI overlord would make decisions every day which individuals would disagree with, at least at the margins.