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Saying that we don't need to fear human extinction in the next ten years (or even the next hundred?) does not feel like an extraordinary claim?

thin_carapace 20d ago
the earth has been 1 decision away from explosion for nearly a hundred years now. do you anticipate a change to this agenda very soon? personally I imagine the same trajectory continuing.
- goatlover 20d ago
  As bad as it would be, it's unlikely that a full scale nuclear war kills all humans across the planet.
  - Jtsummers 20d ago
    And a full scale nuclear war would require a few more than just one decision. So far, we've never been one decision away from annihilation.
    - thin_carapace 20d ago
      certainly I behave like the article's author and yourself all the time, this isn't meant to be some sort of moral point. watching all these smart people talk so confidently regarding things nobody knows about, it reminds of the confidence ai shows in hallucination. would you say that the singular choice of vasili arkhipov did not prevent annihilation?
      - Jtsummers 20d ago
        > would you say that the singular choice of vasili arkhipov did not prevent annihilation? He prevented a catastrophe, but not annihilation. We were not at risk of that in 1962 and even if he had decided to go with the others, more decisions would have been needed (not just his) to fully escalate to full scale nuclear war. I will reiterate: We have never been one decision away from full scale nuclear war. But in case you don't understand why, it's because no one person can actually launch all the missiles. And considering the two major arsenals (US and USSR), there has never been a time when two people could make the same decision (launch) and actually launch all the missiles. The orders still have to go out and acted on, many decisions have to be made in order to have full scale nuclear war and come close to annihilation.
        thin_carapace 20d ago
        I like the way you frame your opinion as a truth with an obligation to be understood. still I disagree that a decision can only be said to affect its direct successors.
0xDEAFBEAD 20d ago
No one knows what is going to happen. But a lot of species have been going extinct lately. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FDd58a4WQAAWaXh.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FDd58a4WQAAWaXh.jpg
- nozzlegear 12d ago
  wtf is this chart lmao, did you just google a line-going-up chart to stick your shower thought onto? > My life is pretty typical, I have a good grasp of what is normal vs weird, and people imagining very different futures with digital people and Al and space travel are indulging themselves in silly sci-fi speculation. This but unironically
mortenjorck 20d ago
The students in the computer lab had no guarantee that they wouldn't, say, download a copy of Napster infected with the CIH virus later. The fact that they were not under imminent threat from some kind of Hollywood-style network worm did not mean they were immune from more realistic attack vectors. Likewise, one can quite reasonably say there is no credible existential, Hollywood-style threat from AI in the foreseeable future while recognizing far lower-stakes, yet important risks that need to be addressed.
abletonlive 20d ago
No it does not seem like an extraordinary claim, unless this is your first time hearing such claims. For the rest of us, we've heard this every decade and it turns out to be entirely untrue. Nuclear, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Y2K Bug, Global Warming. No, we aren't going extinct in the next 10 years.
jacobgold 20d ago
If you think AI will be powerful enough to change the world in huge ways, then it does seem reasonable to assume some level of risk of destroying the world too. Stating that the probability is zero when we simply don't know what the probabilities are does seem like an extraordinary claim. Imagine how reassuring it would be to people if we had evidence that there's no existential risk?
- JeremyNT 19d ago
  > If you think AI will be powerful enough to change the world in huge ways, then it does seem reasonable to assume some level of risk of destroying the world too. There's an opportunity cost in the doomsday prophesying, though. The media coverage of "these extremely capable robots might kill us (according to the guys who sell the robots)" comes at the cost of coverage of the real, present issues surrounding the tech oligarchs that we're already facing. Sure, there are some failure modes that lead to some really bad stuff, but human extinction seems exceedingly unlikely to be one of them, and "10%" is pulled straight out of Dario's derriere. Far more likely are economic disruptions that impact the tenuous balance between labor and capital and lead to unpredictable societal upheaval.

thin_carapace 20d ago

the earth has been 1 decision away from explosion for nearly a hundred years now. do you anticipate a change to this agenda very soon? personally I imagine the same trajectory continuing.

goatlover 20d ago
As bad as it would be, it's unlikely that a full scale nuclear war kills all humans across the planet.
- Jtsummers 20d ago
  And a full scale nuclear war would require a few more than just one decision. So far, we've never been one decision away from annihilation.
  - thin_carapace 20d ago
    certainly I behave like the article's author and yourself all the time, this isn't meant to be some sort of moral point. watching all these smart people talk so confidently regarding things nobody knows about, it reminds of the confidence ai shows in hallucination. would you say that the singular choice of vasili arkhipov did not prevent annihilation?
    - Jtsummers 20d ago
      > would you say that the singular choice of vasili arkhipov did not prevent annihilation? He prevented a catastrophe, but not annihilation. We were not at risk of that in 1962 and even if he had decided to go with the others, more decisions would have been needed (not just his) to fully escalate to full scale nuclear war. I will reiterate: We have never been one decision away from full scale nuclear war. But in case you don't understand why, it's because no one person can actually launch all the missiles. And considering the two major arsenals (US and USSR), there has never been a time when two people could make the same decision (launch) and actually launch all the missiles. The orders still have to go out and acted on, many decisions have to be made in order to have full scale nuclear war and come close to annihilation.
      - thin_carapace 20d ago
        I like the way you frame your opinion as a truth with an obligation to be understood. still I disagree that a decision can only be said to affect its direct successors.

0xDEAFBEAD 20d ago

No one knows what is going to happen. But a lot of species have been going extinct lately. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FDd58a4WQAAWaXh.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FDd58a4WQAAWaXh.jpg

nozzlegear 12d ago
wtf is this chart lmao, did you just google a line-going-up chart to stick your shower thought onto? > My life is pretty typical, I have a good grasp of what is normal vs weird, and people imagining very different futures with digital people and Al and space travel are indulging themselves in silly sci-fi speculation. This but unironically

mortenjorck 20d ago

The students in the computer lab had no guarantee that they wouldn't, say, download a copy of Napster infected with the CIH virus later. The fact that they were not under imminent threat from some kind of Hollywood-style network worm did not mean they were immune from more realistic attack vectors. Likewise, one can quite reasonably say there is no credible existential, Hollywood-style threat from AI in the foreseeable future while recognizing far lower-stakes, yet important risks that need to be addressed.

abletonlive 20d ago

No it does not seem like an extraordinary claim, unless this is your first time hearing such claims. For the rest of us, we've heard this every decade and it turns out to be entirely untrue. Nuclear, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Y2K Bug, Global Warming. No, we aren't going extinct in the next 10 years.

jacobgold 20d ago

If you think AI will be powerful enough to change the world in huge ways, then it does seem reasonable to assume some level of risk of destroying the world too. Stating that the probability is zero when we simply don't know what the probabilities are does seem like an extraordinary claim. Imagine how reassuring it would be to people if we had evidence that there's no existential risk?

JeremyNT 19d ago
> If you think AI will be powerful enough to change the world in huge ways, then it does seem reasonable to assume some level of risk of destroying the world too. There's an opportunity cost in the doomsday prophesying, though. The media coverage of "these extremely capable robots might kill us (according to the guys who sell the robots)" comes at the cost of coverage of the real, present issues surrounding the tech oligarchs that we're already facing. Sure, there are some failure modes that lead to some really bad stuff, but human extinction seems exceedingly unlikely to be one of them, and "10%" is pulled straight out of Dario's derriere. Far more likely are economic disruptions that impact the tenuous balance between labor and capital and lead to unpredictable societal upheaval.