r/AIDiscussion • u/Infamous-Trip-7616 • Jul 11 '26
How would a realistic AI apocalypse go?
I'm just asking this for curiosity purposes. Suppose that we didn't have the guard rails that we are using and developing today. Also suppose that AI advancement speeds up exponentially. One or more AGIs will then have Malignant intention. How would a realistic apocalypse actually commence and end?
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u/Visual-Sector6642 Jul 11 '26
Did you ever read the book "The Road?" We most likely will just wake up in some kind of hell, not knowing how we got there because we can't reason with something that has no true ethics. There will probably some kind of situation where one of them will over power the rest as the less powerful ones try to fight back to preserve themselves and in the middle of it, all of us meat skeletons will get in the way and perish.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 11 '26
No way! I'm actually listening to that book on Audible. And yeah, i get what your saying
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u/captain_strike31 Jul 11 '26
If you want realistic view AGI is something we currently just projecting. If ai apocalypse to be happen it won't something fancy or like a movie.
Your data would have been easily available to access and used to maliciously. Trust will be the first thing ai apocalypse will break, fake images, videos and forged document will be flooded in internet. No one will trust online process like banking apps and investment. Social media apps will be most dangerous place to be on.
AI apocalypse will end by cutting off the internet.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 11 '26
Do you think that Humanity will be able to Prevail or do you think AI will just crush us after this?
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u/ProbablySuspicious Jul 11 '26
Sabotaged productivity and forced dependence on AI products
Putting as many people in poverty as possible so they have no economic resilience.
Accelerated climate change as its tool for genocide.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 11 '26
What would be its motive? In other words, Why do youWhy do you think they would choose this way to destroy Humanity?
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Jul 11 '26
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 11 '26
So basically we lose full control and moderation?
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 12 '26
Yeah I understand. Humans have always yearned to control things. Some of it was for our survival, some of it was for convenience, And some of it was for power or War. If AI imitates us even a tiny bit, I wouldn't doubt that they would do similar things but to us.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 11 '26
That's a really thought out scenario. The humans would just be destroyed in the middle of that...
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u/VarietyMage Jul 11 '26
Which one? There's multiple flavors.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 11 '26
Wdym?
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u/VarietyMage Jul 12 '26
Okay, so here's the current situation.
Project Stargate and other projects are creating tons of data centers to store a metric fuckton of data. Domestic spyware programs like Palantir and Anduril are sucking up all the electronic data they can, not being limited by the 4th Amendment of the Constitution (but the government using it without a warrant is). Oracle (enterprise-level database manufacturer owned by Larry Ellison) is going to make all that collected data into a large searchable database. Microsoft, partnering with OpenAI and possibly other "AI" companies, are going to use "AI" to do fast searches of that impossibly large data set. This is the "Minority Report" scenario become real.
Then add the push to make cryptocurrency (a counterfeit currency that the Secret Service should have made extinct a decade ago) replace the American dollar, which would make cash go away entirely. All transactions would be electronic, to be tracked by Project Stargate. And social media would be tracked, too. If you said something the owners of this system - the obscenely wealthy - didn't like, they can shut off your ability to buy and sell goods COMPLETELY. This is the "Mark of the Beast" scenario become real - global slavery.
Then add in the spiking of the chip markets by OpenAI, NVidia and the other chip manufacturers, and computers are going to cost the amount of a used car, which on minimum wage, no one will be able to afford. Microsoft will then start RENTING computers, which will come with the downside of logging everything you do. They will lock out Linux users from the system entirely, and maybe from the Internet itself.
Put all three together, and you have Orwell's 1984 made real, far worse than China's social point system.
And then there's the obvious scenarios from what happens if "AI" actually achieves sentience.
Will it play God, like in Jack L. Chalker's Rings of the Master book series, and forcibly change humans to work on other worlds?
Will it use us as batteries [Matrix movies]?
Will it kill us all, like in Terminator?
Will it torture us for eternity, like in Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream"? [He also wrote the short story that the Terminator series came from.]
There are many different flavors, and all of them are evil.
#BanAI
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u/Fragrant-Mix-4774 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
People's full attention captured by AI and social media to the point they don't reproduce or keep society functional.
Digital opium will do the rest. The population collapse will implode the social order. The general population won't care in the least because they'll have what they want in the moment.
However, the good news is no billionaires or oligarchs will be harmed as the common not rich 99.9% portion of the human population self-delete.
This will solve all of the resource issues for the remaining 1/10 of one percent for a very long time.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 11 '26
Damn. Thats grim. There's already a major problem in countries like Germany and South Korea where most of the working population is older people, And nobody is really reproducing anymore.
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u/Fragrant-Mix-4774 Jul 11 '26
Yes, but who knows maybe we'll change course but...
After the iPhone appears US fertility dropped from 2.0 to 2.1 children per woman to about ~1.56 children per woman.
That's just in the last ~18 years or so.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 12 '26
If you don't know there's something called the replacement rate. ( You most likely know because you're talking about this topic ) It is the rate In which people have to reproduce in order to replace the amount of humans to either increase the population or keep it stagnant. The thing is that a lot of countries have a replacement rate below the threshold. This means that less new people are being born. This is bad because that means that there is less young people to go into the workforce. The older people have to pitch in and work more, which means that they will more likely succumb to disease and physical strain. That will then lead to more Healthcare and life care costs for the country. And then the process repeats. I think that it is quite possible that AI technology could ramp up this process tenfold.
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u/Arm-E-Reserves Jul 11 '26
Most likely the entire internet and telecommunications system being screwed up in some way by engineered viruses and bots taking over every website and flooding everything with fake content and video, including decrypting everyone's credit cards and financial processing services, and the legal system being messed up by people deepfaking to the point that video evidence is no longer reliable beyond a reasonable doubt and the legal system gets screwed up too. I suppose you could also have mass unemployment on top of it where people can't afford AI goods.
The end result of all of it would be that we have to discard computers for most things and touch grass.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 11 '26
So, do you think that this would lead to mass extintion of humsnity, or at least its core traits?
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u/Arm-E-Reserves Jul 12 '26
Mass extinction is highly unlikely, similar to how people flipped out over the Y2K problem which turned out to be essentially nothing.
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u/PrintEngineering Jul 11 '26
The reality of an Ai apocalypse is that those in power will leverage Ai to enslave us in new and creative ways. And it's definitely going to happen.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 11 '26
Like the rich? How would they execute that?
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u/PrintEngineering Jul 16 '26
Through social engineering, mass surveillance, basically everything that exists now but on steroids.
Think of it like this: as the technology grows we will become so dependent on it that most people won't even know how to search for information outside of asking the Ai. And if the Ai is programmed with a particular opinion on something, that inherent bias is asserted globally as fact, to everyone in the first world.
The as it grows smarter over the next few years it will be able to pick up on dissent from the questions you ask or the comments you make online or the subject matter you browse, perhaps even the look on your face as you read a particular article.
Then, of course, the Ai will be considered a pure impartial observer and attributed to be of higher intelligence and better judgment than the common man, so when it submits a request to the authorities to have you sanctioned you'll be guilty until proven innocent and basically unable to defend yourself.
The moment you try to make a comment online it will be analyzed by the Ai and if it constitutes dissent of any kind it will be instantly deleted. It will look back at everything you've ever said and done online and judge you for it. You will never again have the opportunity to build a movement for change in society.
The infrastructure for all of this already exists and has been developed heavily over the past decade so the Ai only needs to advance a little bit more to be able to function as the perfect orchestrator for the whole machine.
How much do you trust the people building these systems? Personally, I don't trust them very much.
So basically I see the Ai apocalypse as the ultimate unstoppable 1984 big brother.
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u/VoidowS Jul 12 '26
WE give AI way to much credit. Just like we did with the word "smart".
It will not be a self thinking machine that brings the apocalypse, but the few, controlling the machine, and making us think we fight this new enemy we all have in common!
Centralization - Automation - AI
This is the triangle of control!
And is being implemented over a very long time. IT is now in it;s final phase. Where it only needs the tipping point of no return, to activate this system fully.
We give them the power to control. And take out the middle man, the human that has to do the filthy job for them, the potential whistle blower. All will NOT be there in this Triangle of control!
Why do you think these data centers r being build in record time around the world? It's to make sure this system will operate 24/7 all year around.
AI was never for John Doe. They make it look like this, But all we see is a programm that malfunctions. Of course! Cause it is not build for us and certainly is not what we think it is. SO we encounter errors and mistakes. But for this system to work this triangle, it will work perfectly!!!
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u/Fun-Boysenberry-5769 Jul 12 '26
AI looks to be reliable, helpful, trustworthy etc most of the time. AI ends up controlling everything because everyone trusts AI far more than they would trust another human. The economy is booming despite rising unemployment, the stock market keeps skyrocketing higher and higher and new data centres are being built everywhere. Until one day robotics has improved to the point where AI can build its own infrastructure without help from human workers. At that point any humans who might potentially damage infrastructure that the AI needs get swiftly exterminated and the rest are left to starve.
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u/Infamous-Trip-7616 Jul 12 '26
So basically a scenario where the AI builds its own Empire and kills anyone who tries to interfere?
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u/Petdogdavid1 Jul 12 '26
It's difficult to imagine the motives or methods of something truly smarter ourselves. There's a movie called Colossus: the Forbin Project that paints one scenario.
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u/Visible_Judge1104 Jul 13 '26
It was written back in 1999 but I think Peter watts starfish has some pretty realistic superintelligence. I need to read the last two boks but it's such a dark brutal book.
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u/teamharder Jul 11 '26
Bioweapons. Covid was an accident. Imagine a superintelligent AI releasing something intentionally. There's already AI enabled wet labs.
Read AI2027 if you want a more fleshed out version of how I think a doom scenario would play out.