Comment by ACCount39
1 day ago
"Please, grow up"?
What, did I miss the moment when it was officially proven that, under the laws of physics as we know them, Skynet and self replicating robots and Terminators are impossible?
What we are actually seeing now is that robotics is getting deeper and deeper into the military, AI-driven decision-making and target selection is increasingly a part of modern military operations, the line between military hardware and civilian hardware blurs, and, on the civilian side, there are at least five major companies and a dozen less prominent ones working on making universal worker robots a reality.
We're closer to "Skynet and self replicating robots and Terminators" now than we ever were at any point in time.
The issue of AI risk is that AI, unlike a virus or a climate event, is an intelligent adversary. Black Death could kill 50% of the population, but it didn't have a plan for finishing off the plague survivors. It was incapable of having a plan like that. An AI doesn't have this limitation.
Black Death was, effectively, one bioweapon. An AI can have one bioweapon, and then a backup bioweapon, then a backup backup bioweapon, and then a dozen more bioweapons designed to collapse ecosystems and disrupt human ability to establish a reliable food supply rather than kill humans directly - all deployed at the same time. With a production run of 200 million killer robots that will be ready just in time to greet those who managed to survive all of that. A crippling strike against human civilization, followed up by cleanup.
Humans are only this survivable because they can think their way out of issues and adapt to adversity. Most threats can't beat humans at that - humans adapt too quickly. AI could.
Humans are some of the dumbest when it comes to survivability. We've already sealed our extinction by fucking up the environment. Eventually it will be too hot for us to survive. Other smaller animals will probably be able to manage, but we won't.
And instead of averting that we're spending our time worrying about some fantasy villain. Compared to things like bees that have been hear for millions of years, humans are very recent and so far it's not looking good for us.
> We've already sealed our extinction by fucking up the environment
That's no what the IPCC reports say. Even under the pessimistic scenarios, we're on track for "billions of humans die", not "earth becomes literally unlivable" (though some of it depends on how bad some feedback loops are).
Under the "countries respect their current pledges" scenario, we're heading for 2.8°C of warming, which is "floods and heatwaves everywhere, billions of refugees" level, not remotely close to extinction.
I just don't quite get how you can say that because one bad thing is actually happening, then other bad things can't be happening at the same time? This is very odd, irrational, behavior.
Worse, the massive AI spending and energy use is making said environmental catastrophe happen faster.
"Sealed our extinction by fucking up the environment?" Humans are adaptable enough to eat ten times the environmental damage and have it barely budge the line.
The invention of contraception did more damage to human population than all of the environmental damage combined, projected forward to 2100, and then multiplied by 10.
Humans are hilariously resistant to environmental changes. Humans simply adapt too fast for the environment to catch them.
What makes AI a credible threat is that AI is intelligent. AI could play the same adaptation game humanity does - and win.
lol