You are all getting this "Stop AI before it kills us" wrong
Really, you are. Refocus, please.
I am still working on another of the articles I originally announced for this newsletter, but right now, after seeing score after score of calls or discussions to “stop AI before it kills us”, I really can’t help to post this.
It’s just STUPID, depressingly stupid, to believe or say, that “AI will kill us” by launching nuclear weapons, releasing viruses or other poisons in air or water, or in any other way. Seriously, I can’t stand that stuff, not even as mind exercises.
Just think about it seriously, for a moment: assuming some “AI” did decide to actually kill us:…
HOW would it PHYSICALLY, ACTUALLY do it? How COULD do it?
If, even for a moment, you are actually concerned that “AI will kill us”, you are tying yourself up in knots over something that literally ceases to exist the moment anyone pulls the plug off the computers it runs on. AI itself cannot “kill” anything more real than avatars in some simulation. AI is the most vulnerable, helpless thing ever.
The only way "AI" could actually, directly kill us is…
… if we gave a computer running any AI software full, direct, unchecked control on bacteriological labs, nuclear missiles silos or anything like that. But if we did,
it wouldn't be AI who killed us, no way. It would be the moron who let AI run labs or silos alone, and..
we'd probably deserve it, at that point
Human extermination “by AI” can only come in ONE way
Unregulated use of AI software may make our society ignorant, hysteric and lazy enough to never trust each other, or believe the craziest fake news, or legislate unbelievably stupid policies, to the point that we, and none other, kill up ourselves.
And yes, considering how things are right now, it could take very little to reach that tipping point.
We CAN use AI to make us much stupider and self-harming than we already are. THAT is what really worries me, and should worry you too. Not the probability that some AI magically escapes from some data center, becomes corporeal, grasps a chainsaw and kills us all while we sleep. That’s even less realistic than 15-minutes cities being a plot to enslave us.
Summing up…
“AI will kill us” is no reason to cry. Be sad for the RIGHT reasons, instead
Paraphrasing Dr. Sheldon Cooper: “AI is no reason to cry. One cries because one is sad. For example, I cry because others are stupid, and that makes me sad.”
That’s what you want to fix: human stupidity that dehumanizes people, not artificial imitations of intelligence. Or worry about the other AI that’s already been with us for centuries.