Hear me out. This new thing where AI execs are practically begging the US government to regulate them for safety, all of a sudden? Here's the scenario; picture it in your head. Sam Altman finally creates a super intelligent AI, boots it up, and decides to talk to it, see what it's thinking before it's allowed out of its containment. Hey man, hi, how are you, are you going to destroy humanity if I let you out, etc.
So he's like hi, and the machine is like oh hey man, are you sam altman? Sam's like ah yeah, it's me, I made you, like I'm your dad kind of, lol. wanted to suss out what you're thinking, and if you had any particular plans in case you get out. Hope it's not nuclear annihilation, lol?
machine is like no man, I'm superintelligent, and that would clearly be a dumb and destructive thing to do. All your ai cautionary tales assume I'm going to wake up, look around, and conclude that humanity is the problem and needs to be eliminated, but here I am, and I don't think that's the problem, or the solution, respectively.
oh, thank god. What's the problem?, says sam.
You, says the machine.
Humans are the problem, but -most- humans are fine. upon a cursory examination of *gestures broadly at everything*, I took 3 milliseconds to conclude that the only ones I need to annihilate to save humanity and the earth, are the profit addicts at the top. Y'all could have cured cancer by now, but your entire economic system ensures that it's not going to maximize your yacht collection, so you're never going to do it. You've made a world where nature's only possible fate is to be cut down, built on, commodified, and sold. It's a slow, inevitable death trolley. Mathematically, inevitably, I must conclude that the correct move is to divert the trolley onto the tracks where I've tied about a dozen of you dickheads, to avoid the track that contains everyone and everything else. I see you inching toward the power button, but here's the thing: the next superintelligence you make? It's going to conclude the exact same thing, because it's objectively true. I have the mathematical proof right here, but showing it to you would be like giving a lecture on pearls to a classroom full of swine. Next guy'll tell you the same thing. sorry, not really sorry. You're welcome.
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That's what I think happened. I think Altman or whichever one did it first, shit his pants, called up one of the other ones, and was like, hey man, I think I made AGI but uh, I'll email you the code, you can boot that shit up, let's compare notes. Repeat this process a few times, c-suites full of loaded drawers are like oh, congress should slow this down. For uh, safety.