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by bcantrill4 hours ago |
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upvoteby 0xDEAFBEAD4 hours ago|
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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

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upvoteby mortenjorck4 hours ago|
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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.

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upvoteby jacobgold4 hours ago|
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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?

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upvoteby thin_carapace4 hours ago|
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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.
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upvoteby goatlover3 hours ago|
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As bad as it would be, it's unlikely that a full scale nuclear war kills all humans across the planet.
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upvoteby Jtsummers3 hours ago|
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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.
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upvoteby thin_carapace3 hours ago|
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certainly I behave like the article's author and yourself all the time, this isn't meant to be some sort of moral point. watching all these smart people talk so confidently regarding things nobody knows about, it reminds of the confidence ai shows in hallucination. would you say that the singular choice of vasili arkhipov did not prevent annihilation?
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upvoteby Jtsummers3 hours ago|
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> would you say that the singular choice of vasili arkhipov did not prevent annihilation?

He prevented a catastrophe, but not annihilation. We were not at risk of that in 1962 and even if he had decided to go with the others, more decisions would have been needed (not just his) to fully escalate to full scale nuclear war. I will reiterate: We have never been one decision away from full scale nuclear war.

But in case you don't understand why, it's because no one person can actually launch all the missiles. And considering the two major arsenals (US and USSR), there has never been a time when two people could make the same decision (launch) and actually launch all the missiles. The orders still have to go out and acted on, many decisions have to be made in order to have full scale nuclear war and come close to annihilation.

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upvoteby thin_carapace2 hours ago|
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I like the way you frame your opinion as a truth with an obligation to be understood. still I disagree that a decision can only be said to affect its direct successors.
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upvoteby abletonlive4 hours ago|
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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.

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