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I am far more concerned about the very real potential for evolutionary forces to decimate humanity inside of a few days, weeks or months. While we worry about

I am far more concerned about the very real potential for evolutionary forces to decimate humanity inside of a few days, weeks or months. While we worry about all kids of things at the macro level microscopic organism continue to evolve. Any given Monday the blind clock maker could deliver an invisible bug right into our laps, one for which we will have no defenses. Our interconnected world will mean this bug will easily jump population centers. The devastation we could see if such an event occurred could be of unprecedented scale and breath. We could lose one quarter or more of the population of this planet given the right conditions. So, yeah, AI could, I guess, go rogue. Yet the real threat isn't anywhere near what we can see and touch. In fact, we might NEED real AI to save humanity when and if that super-bug emerges. Think about that for a moment.

russdill 7y ago
Can you point to any extinction level events from a "superbug" for a species that was not already teetering on extinction? Seems like something that only comes around once every few hundred million years.
- etiam 7y ago
  How about this one? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/science/frogs-fungus-bd.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/science/frogs-fungus-bd.h... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycosis
  - russdill 7y ago
    Not a new pathogen, just a pathogen given more range than before.
- robomartin 7y ago
  How is that relevant? How would anyone have access to such data when our recorded history on such matters might not even go back a hundred years. More importantly, up until, say, 100 years ago, human mobility around the world (and even locally) was very limited and slow. Think what it took in 1919 to go from, say, China to Patagonia or from Alaska to Los Angeles. Today it is a matter of hours and it happens in large volumes every day, everywhere in the world. Here's what we know: - Evolution is real (stating the obvious just in case there is a question) - Natural selection survives organism that are able to deal with the environment within which they have to exist - Antibiotic abuse is rampant (again, stating the obvious) - Such abuse provides the mechanism though which evolution will be able to create the aforementioned super-bug - Once that individual emerges our defenses will be ineffective - The world is massively connected, which means that super-bugs can travel from population to population like never in history - Stopping super-bugs will require such measures as stopping society as we know it from functioning (no travel, local or international) and maybe even having no choice but to quarantine and allow a population (of humans) to die in the interest of stopping transmission. If a bug has a 75% kill rate and we don't have a cure, do you allow anyone from the affected group to be in contact with anyone else? So, yeah, is it possible? Sure. Probable? I guess. I am not sure there's a deterministic function one can use to predict the outcome of evolution, even at bacterial levels. My guess is it could take a thousand years or it could happen next Monday. I don't know.

russdill 7y ago

Can you point to any extinction level events from a "superbug" for a species that was not already teetering on extinction? Seems like something that only comes around once every few hundred million years.

etiam 7y ago
How about this one? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/science/frogs-fungus-bd.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/science/frogs-fungus-bd.h... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chytridiomycosis
- russdill 7y ago
  Not a new pathogen, just a pathogen given more range than before.
robomartin 7y ago
How is that relevant? How would anyone have access to such data when our recorded history on such matters might not even go back a hundred years. More importantly, up until, say, 100 years ago, human mobility around the world (and even locally) was very limited and slow. Think what it took in 1919 to go from, say, China to Patagonia or from Alaska to Los Angeles. Today it is a matter of hours and it happens in large volumes every day, everywhere in the world. Here's what we know: - Evolution is real (stating the obvious just in case there is a question) - Natural selection survives organism that are able to deal with the environment within which they have to exist - Antibiotic abuse is rampant (again, stating the obvious) - Such abuse provides the mechanism though which evolution will be able to create the aforementioned super-bug - Once that individual emerges our defenses will be ineffective - The world is massively connected, which means that super-bugs can travel from population to population like never in history - Stopping super-bugs will require such measures as stopping society as we know it from functioning (no travel, local or international) and maybe even having no choice but to quarantine and allow a population (of humans) to die in the interest of stopping transmission. If a bug has a 75% kill rate and we don't have a cure, do you allow anyone from the affected group to be in contact with anyone else? So, yeah, is it possible? Sure. Probable? I guess. I am not sure there's a deterministic function one can use to predict the outcome of evolution, even at bacterial levels. My guess is it could take a thousand years or it could happen next Monday. I don't know.