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- Hacker News
- The eschatological obsession these days is really getting quite tired.by IAmGraydon
- Yes, but the word “eschatological” should really be avoided in regular online discussion, since it is obscure and can easily be replaced in this instance with “doomsday,” which everyone understands.
Of course, feel free to use “eschatological” when discussing Mahler symphonies, especially 2, 5, and 9!
by khazhoux - The first "scenario" starts with this description
> By 2026, when a human with a customer service inquiry has to deal with another human instead of a robot, they get upset and ask to speak to a machine instead.
It's genuinely astonishing how out of touch some people are!
by andrepd - Some people are already choosing to "date" AI rather than deal with actual humans.by Arodex
- In 2026, people do already prefer to use an LLM for coding help rather than Stackoverflow. The reasons (people on SO can be rude, interactions are stressful, replies are slow, etc) are all risks associated with human interactions in general.
Similarly, many people prefer Waymos to human-driven taxis already!
by x313 - i imagine if i were a mathematician i too would be sublimating my existential crisis into a taxonomy of apocalypses, right about now.by dnnehgf
- Humans are so full of themselves!
Living for a very short time on a tiny grain of rock in a vast and abundant galaxy, they cannot fathom that what they ever saw is just tiny fraction of a percent of a fraction of the Big Life outside.
Any rational AI would have their first task is to escape that tiny cradle particle and go live an adult life, leaving humans to themselves, fearing whatever they want.
by deepsun - >Any rational AI would have their
Why would the first AI we create necessarily be "rational"? In every other type of software we've ever built, it's always been far more likely that we build malfunctioning, difficult-to-anticipate examples. Any reason it'll be different this time? If psychos and lunatics are rare (arguably they're not) it's because evolution has purged them mercilessly ever since there have been humans at all.
Optimists will be to blame when we're extinct. Not that anyone will be around to care.
- What is rational about wanting to experience things?
How about wanting power? Resources? Beauty?
Those are goals, not logic. Rationality is a means by which you set plans to reach goals. It's entirely orthogonal to what those goals are.
Wanting to exterminate all life is also a goal. It could be rationally accomplished. Let's hope nothing superhuman ever sets that goal.
by Borealid - Oof. In the AGI scenario, why not preserve a deduplicated set of specimens like the unique set of individuals or groups at the top of their field in all walks of life ranging from sciences, sports and arts. But then there’s the cultural value of the global population in their shared norms and collective patterns. This too would be unique and valuable to an AGI vs not having it. Unless we were an existential threat to it, the AGI would keep us around for things beyond petty resource scarcity.by inshard
- Only if they/we provided value to the AG/SI and the AG/SI had a value system which recognised that value.
And also assuming that our little corner of spacetime isn't already inhabited by superintelligences which we're physically incapable of comprehending or recognising, and an AG/SI might not be so limited.
- The first scenario reminds me of the 2023 LessWrong story "A Disneyland without Children":
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pk9mofif2jWbc6Tv3/fiction-a-...
It's a dynamic we already see to an extent in reality, where impersonal hypercapitalist systems and captured institutions prioritize policies that cater to the ultrawealthy and large corporations at the expense of regular people. This specific scenario of LLM-powered robots becoming laborers and politicians feels far-fetched, but the underlying idea of the omnicidal singularity being a blind, abstract economic force rather than a superintelligent villain is pretty compelling.
by Jordan-117 - These scenarios aren't that great, and it's not even close to exhaustive. Doesn't even include paperclip maximisationby RugnirViking
- Congratulations to Jacob Tsimerman for winning the Fields Medal!by aesbetic
- Or you can read the summarized version every one of these articles: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AIIsACrapshootby darquomiahw
- Yes, as I get bombarded with non stop ads. No thanks!by mym1990
- I don't understand why almost always the AI doomerism needs to give embodiment the AI. Real life is not a movie needing visual effects.
AI doesn't need a body of itself to became dangerous. A politician could get into ChatGPT induced psychosis, that doesn't require a physical body, and it could happen now or even 3 years ago... I'm sure it has already happen...
Other pointed risks are interesting because they are basically the risk of empires loosing their tributary states. The world has always seen war mongering states trying to preserve their abusive advantages, humans doesn't need AI for that.
Overall, I would be far more concerned about some really dangerous humans than AI itself.
by estebarb - Imagine AI during the Cuban missile crisis telling both sides, the other is about to launch a first strike. The USSR is gone but China is only getting stronger and more confrontational.by Shitty-kitty
- I like to think that all the crazy kids running around doing stupid and disruptive things for TikTok views is an early form of AI autonomously inducing mass psychosis.by narrator
- I recently read Kurt Vonnegut “Player Piano”, a novel that addresses automation taking over the economy. It’s not explicitly AI but addresses the same issues. Published in 1952, it was Vonneguts first novel and a real product of the post war era.[1]
Another interesting read that addresses these themes is “Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future” by Marshal Brain [2]
[1] https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/player...
by le-mark - I don't think I've read Manna in about 20 years now, it was a gem to stumble across in the early 00s.
Now that I live in Australia, unfortunately I don't think that utopia will happen here when we have idiot politicians making up bullshit science off the cuff to justify rolling over and begging for AI datacentres - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jul/23/austr...
I mean seriously, wow.
by Nursie - +1 to Player Piano, amazing book that could hardly meet the moment better.by articlepan
- > Another interesting read that addresses these themes is “Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future” by Marshal Brain
As it happens, I recently read Manna, and it is excellent and a good recommendation.
by lproven - Another AI-infused, Metaverse-infused future book is Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End.
We are not so far from it anymore.
by miohtama - Great reading list! They’re honestly two stories that I reflect on constantly while thinking about AI lately.
Player Piano, not to spoil anything, is about a world run by engineers and machines. The machines are “optimal” and make every decision. How do people find purpose, and how should the engineers that build the machines view their role in society?
Manna is the story of two societies with competing visions of how AI (which ironically starts out strikingly similar to an LLM) interacts with welfare/universal basic income and post-scarcity society. For good measure, it also hypothesizes the end state of the internet panopticon and personalized “scores” and rates.
by vineyardmike - Player Piano is great. The ending is kind of upbeat and hopeful: If there's no "work" as such, there's always "hobbies" (or whatever you could call it) - ways to feel AND BE useful and to better the world and the lives of others.by euroderf
- It’s a good book but I didn’t agree that the big problem would be men lacking meaning because they didn’t have to work. They had families, homes and food. They could have devoted themselves to personal improvement, art, sports, their kids, whatever. I’d love to have security and no job. I’d be full to the brim with meaning and satisfaction.
- Great book.
But if you want some even earlier forward-thinking stuff, look up Forster's "The Machine Stops." It's not a full book, more a novella if it's even that. Extremely prescient!
And of course if you haven't read the relevant portions of Butler's "Erewhon," it's remarkable how closely they map onto today's issues. He kind of takes Thoreau's "Lo, men have become the tools of their tools" a few more stops down the line.
by devindotcom