Will AI kill us all

(virev.ai)

13 points | by krenerd 6 hours ago

9 comments

  • smath 26 minutes ago
    Seems to me like we need to create a credible threat to the AI of mad (mutually assured destruction)? This is what addressed the question during the Cold War of “will nuclear weapons kill all humans” (if historical documentaries and movies are to be believed). Coordination between governments or corporations to limit AI is a hopeless strategy — because it is a classical example of prisoners dilemma / tragedy of the commons. We can see it hasn’t worked for climate change.

    Anyone know of this (MAD) is being seriously thought of?

  • fwlr 1 hour ago

        Every number below is someone's judgment, and the answer changes with who is asked 
    
    Ah, yes, different people have different answers. Insightful as always, Claude.
    • johnisgood 54 minutes ago
      It does not have to be Claude (at least cannot tell based on this alone) since it is something I would say. In all fairness though I did pick up other phrases too from LLMs (especially Claude), for better or worse, so sometimes my comment gets automatically flagged on here. :D

      But yeah, it says nothing. Though I realized sometimes the obvious needs to be spelled out at times.

  • spicyusername 49 minutes ago
    Watching the FUD and doomerism take root in the discourse and in our collective psyches really helps me understand so many other periods in history.

    We really can't help but let our imagination run wild when given the opportunity.

    Reminds me of Y2K.

    Are there going to be myriad material challenges we will need to face as this incredible technology unfolds?

    Of course. Economic displacement, education reform, etc.

    Are they existential, though? I don't see it. These are "standard fare" problems for post Enlightenment societies to deal with, even if they are real challenges.

    We already have serious tangible existential threats we should be focusing on between things like climate change, ecological collapse, population decline, and pandemic risk.

    I wish we could stay focused on the problems that are real instead of getting distracted by the problems that are imagined.

    • fdvrse 19 minutes ago
      I concur. Climate change and ecological collapse are thing we should be focusing on. And I’m hopeful that AI in the long term might help us towards solving them. But to be honest, most normal people are just worried and scared about their jobs/financial impact which are their most immediate concerns and that’s what got most people in a frenzy. The AI gonna destroy world crowd is a bit of an outlier imo.
    • gerikson 20 minutes ago
      I am old enough to remember the Cold War and the quite plausible risk that civilization would be wiped out by nuclear war.

      This is similar except the people warning about nuclear weapons are eagerly soliciting venture capital to build more of them.

  • areoform 28 minutes ago
    It's fascinating to me that no real mechanism is offered. There's no plausible sequence, just vague gestures at a silicon god who transcends all bounds.

    And the reason why we take it seriously? Probability! And multiplication. "If something is as bad as human extinction and there's a 1% chance, then that 1% times a bajillion is a gazillion!! A gazillion!! We must do everything! If it's a gazillion, it all makes it worthwhile!"

    When pushed, adherents will say "intelligence is different," and this is "unlike anything else we've ever seen." And therefore this reasoning is valid. From my point of view, gibberish times gibberish is still gibberish. It doesn't matter how you dress it.

    Fundamentally, these propositions are indistinguishable from religion and Pascal's wager. And I'm not ok with this, I am not ok with a retreat to superstition powered by hyper-technological black boxes that are a product of hundreds of years of scientific progress.

    I reject this premise and this nonsense. I ask for evidence, and I ask for reason. The laws of physics care not if you're slab of meat or a silicon god.

  • HelloUsername 4 hours ago
    Related: "Pacing the frontier" 28.jul.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089240 204 comments
  • sigmoid10 2 hours ago
    >In the newest survey of 1,580 AI researchers, the median chance of AI causing human extinction or a similar permanent loss of power was 10%

    Ah, yes, the good old Chinese estimation method.

    https://www.imaginatorium.org/stuff/nose.htm

  • jt2190 19 minutes ago
    Let me deliberately hijack this tread with what I think is a more realistic question: “How much economic damage, in USD, would be inflicted on global economies if 80% of the internet was down for a week?”
  • loopydosuette 1 hour ago
    likely most yes, but not in the way one would assume ... and it's just gonna be the final blow ... it all started a while ago when enough people stopped being people and their little mobster-rapey stalker-wannabe "Netflix You" mentality took most of their behavior/cognition over ...

    it's gonna kill the self in a lot of people, if it hasn't done that already ... best example is people who want to be in film and music but are too bad even after years and now resort to AI or wannabe-writers and wannabe-journalists and wannabe-bloggers with zero real effort and sweat and pain and time put in now resorting to bot farms to collect ideas and AI hacking to steal ideas and pseudo-sabotage and distract some people to steal their attention and waste that of others.

    it's so weird what the old guard "electively" ignored and fostered (people without money and opportunity managed well until they got sabotaged but people with money never got sabotaged and still.. this?) ... they just wanted their descendants to perform this bad and ugly? not better, harder, faster, stronger, smarter? so boring, ... but character and personal preference until the self is gone. copypasta, copypasta everywhere... and the few with ideas, it's always been a few, are definitely not going to share their good stuff no more.

  • DylanMerigaud 6 hours ago
    Bold title for a site with one point so far.