AI apocalypse fears went mainstream last month after an Anthropic researcher resigned, saying the technology has more than a 10% chance of wiping out humanity. Leaders of AI companies called for a collective slowdown of development.
In the process, the public learned that the tech industry’s conception of AI safety is dominated by a small group of people who believe, with a certainty and devotion resembling religion, that an artificial superintelligence will arrive soon and take over the world. Befitting that millenarian outlook, they appear to have an unhealthy internal culture, part of which sure looks like a sex cult.
But while existential risk deserves some attention, fixating on apocalyptic scenarios ignores real-world problems involving the actually already existing AI. We have proven methods to address disruptive technology, but for anyone who opposes the use of those methods, apocalyptic fantasies can be a useful distraction.
The problems…
Read the full article for free in Liberal Currents here: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-plausible-techno-dystopian-future/
I have written a lot about how Agentic AI and this Citizen Scientist can collaborate. You can see these things here: https://tdhawkes.substack.com/. Agentic AI is a great tool developed by many human collaborators for over a century. It can help us figure out solutions to the many problems humans face in these difficult days of evolution!