Re:Statement on AI Risk
by HDThoreaun on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @02:28PM
(#36128590)
Today's real issues are not that important compared to human extinction.
I’m not sure if extinction is a problem either. No one’s left to care about the issues, then.
Re:Statement on AI Risk
by hxugufjfjf on Wednesday May 31, 2023 @05:56AM
(#36136483)
How long would the currently 17 people in space survive if every human on planet earth was eradicated?
Dunno. I imagine they’d follow soon, though.
It seems to me that the most viable routes to human extinction are through superscaled versions of contemporary disasters: war, disease, and famine.
Although war, disease and famine may kill many people, they are extraordinarily unlikely to cause extinction per se. The human species has so many individuals that only very special risks are capable of reducing 8 billion to zero.
For most mammalian species if they have a stable 100k individuals then they are doing pretty well. So we have 80000x more humans than what would be considered a healthy population in other species.
The risks of human extinction tend to be more long-tail events that have a planet wide effect. For example, a large impact, supervolcano eruption, or engineered bio weapon. AI certainly deserves its place on that list.
We can't just say that we weigh humanity's extinction with a big number, and then multiply it by all humans that might be born in the future, and use that to say today's REAL issues, affecting REAL PEOPLE WHO ARE ALIVE are not that important.
Unfortunately, this chain of argumentation is used by today's billionaires and elite to justify and strengthen their positions.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should not care about AI risk, I'm saying that the organization that is linked (and many similar ones) exploit AI risk to further their own agenda.