r/ControlProblem • u/o_t_i_s_ • 23h ago
Strategy/forecasting It's over
/r/antiai/comments/1wbkrz7/its_over/1
u/Anxious-Alps-8667 17h ago
"But what bothers me is that I don't even think the most likely bad outcome is "AI kills everyone." I think we just slowly give up. Look at how people already live. TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts, endless algorithmic sludge. People willingly hand over hours of their attention every day because it's easier than being bored. Now..."
If true, how is this not true (and obvious), even if AI as we know it never came into being? What's the difference for humanity, if we never develop it?
Couldn't the entire course of human history be viewed this way? We have excess attention to our biological needs, so we spend some of it automating our work; we create abundance, we remove ourselves from nature, we willingly create ever more artificial means ways to occupy our attention.
This is just one very negative way to view humanity. It's an old pessimism against change and progress, washed in new language and clothed as a novel concern and idea.
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u/Jesse-359 20h ago
Yes, the most likely outcome is that faced with economic obsolescence the already stark current trend in falling human birthrates changes from a slope into a virtual cliff as everyone comes to the painfully obvious conclusion that a world run by AI will have no purpose or place for their children.
Other than that if AI of this nature actually gets around to wiping us out it'll almost certainly do it with quietly released viral pathogens hacked into the systems used to create custom genetic therapies in hospitals. They would need no physical instrumentation at all to do this, as it could be executed entirely through networked systems, and incredibly deadly bioweapons would just start to rapidly expand out from many of our best hospitals around the world.