chollingJan 28, 2025
For years I've been hearing that "One day AI will be smarter than humans and we'll all be doomed."

"Nonsense," I said. "AI is very stupid, and not getting noticeably smarter." And I was right.

But I didn't think about the fact that there were two ways that prophecy could be fulfilled.
Show thread✨️ Kay? ✨️Apr 15
@cholling in season 3 of the tv show "Elementary" (a modern Sherlock Holmes adaption from the 2010s that is actually pretty good) there's an episode with an AI that is supposedly showing signs of true intelligence and someone frames it for the murder of one of it's programmers
The actual murderer is a guy who is part of a think tank that works on trying to anticipate every way that humanity could possibly become extinct, and this particular guy is part of a subset who believe that if AI becomes truly intelligent/sentient we will be doomed within weeks.
I just saw the episode last night and thought "man. The prospect of AI dooming humanity still feels very real, but not for the same reasons" (that being the environmental impact + people losing critical thinking and relying on AI to think for them, rather than from kind of machine uprising)
Show threadcholling
@perseidipity Indeed, the biggest AI boosters sell the idea of "AI apocalypse" to distract us from the real harm it's doing right now-- and to attempt regulatory capture: "If we let just anyone develop AI, it'll turn into Skynet and kill us all, so we need strong regulations that favor OpenAI's business model while raising entry costs for competitors, because only we know how to make 'safe' AI." And of course, they jump at the chance for a big military contract, because nothing says "prevent Skynet" like letting your word-guesser bot pilot drones.
Apr 15 at 1:14amWeb