If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
The Spin
Techno-skeptic narrative
Yudkowsky’s and Soares’s book highlights the very real and existential threat of ASI. ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’ acts as a warning, showcasing how even the most seemingly innocent AI development could quickly spiral out of control, and leave humanity at the mercy of thinking machines with ideas, concepts and wants utterly alien to human comprehension. Governments and citizens should take their work as a wake-up call and consider the danger that humanity is sleepwalking into.
Techno-optimist narrative
The doom-mongering of Yudkowsky and Soares is fundamentally unfounded. By their own metrics, it is implausible that an ASI would inevitably turn against humanity, that it would even be successful in causing human extinction if it did, or that it would grow beyond humanity’s means of control in the first place. Rather than obsessing over science fiction, it would be better if Yudkowsky and Soares dedicated their minds and energy to tackling the existential threats that actually exist, such as climate change.
Narrative C
AI won’t wipe out mankind, but if it continues to develop at its current trajectory, it will steal our humanity and our economic function. Rather than liberating us from our unwanted labor to pursue higher aims, it will leave many jobless and many more in precarious employment. Instead of allowing us to grow, advanced AI systems will reduce us to dependents, requiring their services to perform even the most rudimentary tasks after outsourcing responsibility to machine intelligences. Rather than extinction, the real threat AI poses is degradation.
