AI 2027

It’s good science fiction, I’ll give it that. I think getting lost in the weeds over technicalities ignores the crux of the narrative: even if this doesn’t lead to AGI, at the very least it’s likely the final “warning shot” we’ll get before it’s suddenly and irreversibly here.

The problems it raises - alignment, geopolitics, lack of societal safeguards - are all real, and happening now (just replace “AGI” with “corporations”, and voila, you have a story about the climate crisis and regulatory capture). We should be solving these problems before AGI or job-replacing AI becomes commonplace, lest we run the very real risk of societal collapse or species extinction.

The point of these stories is to incite alarm, because they’re trying to provoke proactive responses while time is on our side, instead of trusting self-interested individuals in times of great crisis.

> The problems it raises - alignment, geopolitics, lack of societal safeguards - are all real, and happening now (just replace “AGI” with “corporations”, and voila, you have a story about the climate crisis and regulatory capture).

Can you point to the data that suggests these evil corporations are ruining the planet? Carbon emissions are down in every western country since 1990s. Not down per-capita, but down in absolute terms. And this holds even when adjusting for trade (i.e. we're not shipping our dirty work to foreign countries and trading with them). And this isn't because of some regulation or benevolence. It's a market system that says you should try to produce things at the lowest cost and carbon usage is usually associated with a cost. Get rid of costs, get rid of carbon.

Other measures for Western countries suggests the water is safer and overall environmental deaths have decreased considerably.

The rise in carbon emissions is due to Chine and India. Are you talking about evil Chinese and Indians corporations?

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

Thanks for letting us know everything is fine, just in case we get confused and think the opposite.

You're welcome. I know too many upper middle class educated people that don't want to have kids because they believe the earth will cease to be inhabitable in the next 10 years. It's really bizarre to see and they'll almost certainly regret it when they wake up one day alone in a nursing home, look around and realize that the world still exists.

And I think the neuroticism around this topic has led young people into some really dark places (anti-depressants, neurotic anti social behavior, general nihilism). So I think it's important to fight misinformation about end of world doomsday scenarios with both facts and common sense.