Comment by bcantrill
8 hours ago
Saying that we don't need to fear human extinction in the next ten years (or even the next hundred?) does not feel like an extraordinary claim?
8 hours ago
Saying that we don't need to fear human extinction in the next ten years (or even the next hundred?) does not feel like an extraordinary claim?
No one knows what is going to happen. But a lot of species have been going extinct lately.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FDd58a4WQAAWaXh.jpg
The students in the computer lab had no guarantee that they wouldn't, say, download a copy of Napster infected with the CIH virus later. The fact that they were not under imminent threat from some kind of Hollywood-style network worm did not mean they were immune from more realistic attack vectors.
Likewise, one can quite reasonably say there is no credible existential, Hollywood-style threat from AI in the foreseeable future while recognizing far lower-stakes, yet important risks that need to be addressed.
If you think AI will be powerful enough to change the world in huge ways, then it does seem reasonable to assume some level of risk of destroying the world too.
Stating that the probability is zero when we simply don't know what the probabilities are does seem like an extraordinary claim.
Imagine how reassuring it would be to people if we had evidence that there's no existential risk?
the earth has been 1 decision away from explosion for nearly a hundred years now. do you anticipate a change to this agenda very soon? personally I imagine the same trajectory continuing.
As bad as it would be, it's unlikely that a full scale nuclear war kills all humans across the planet.
And a full scale nuclear war would require a few more than just one decision. So far, we've never been one decision away from annihilation.
3 replies →
No it does not seem like an extraordinary claim, unless this is your first time hearing such claims. For the rest of us, we've heard this every decade and it turns out to be entirely untrue.
Nuclear, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Y2K Bug, Global Warming.
No, we aren't going extinct in the next 10 years.