[crisdux]

Everything is turned into an existential risk these days. People are prone to believe in apocalyptic predictions because they fear the unknown and rely on flawed mental heuristics. Apocalyptic predictions automatically illicit skepticism from me.

[blowski]

Yes, this is how I feel about it. Between climate change, obesity, GM foods, mega-viruses, insects dying, extreme solar flares, and now AI, I’m surprised I’m still here anyway. Just perhaps AI will actually help solve some of those problems.

[graeme]

Counterpoint: the more our capacity grows, the more we have the legitimate ability to bring absolute destruction

Plastic or some other chemical ending sperm counts —> we previously had no ability to affect the global ecosystem on this scale

Bioweapon virus or microorganism eviscerating civilization —> we had no prior ability to engineer such a plague

Nuclear holocaust —> we previously had no ability to destroy the world with weapons

Runaway climate change —> we previously had no ability to alter the climate

Ai sky net moment —> we previously had no ability to make such an intelligence

Solar flare cutting all electronics —> we previously had no dependence upon a single point of failure

I could go on. We’ve had plenty of civilizations collapse but nothing has been so linked before and we lacked such capacity before.

This is not to say any of the above will come to pass. But it is foolish to say “apocalypses were previously impossible hence such warnings can be dismissed out of hand”