zlacker

>>Tenoke+(OP)
It’s good science fiction, I’ll give it that. I think getting lost in the weeds over technicalities ignores the crux of the narrative: even if this doesn’t lead to AGI, at the very least it’s likely the final “warning shot” we’ll get before it’s suddenly and irreversibly here.

The problems it raises - alignment, geopolitics, lack of societal safeguards - are all real, and happening now (just replace “AGI” with “corporations”, and voila, you have a story about the climate crisis and regulatory capture). We should be solving these problems before AGI or job-replacing AI becomes commonplace, lest we run the very real risk of societal collapse or species extinction.

The point of these stories is to incite alarm, because they’re trying to provoke proactive responses while time is on our side, instead of trusting self-interested individuals in times of great crisis.

>>stego-+LK1
Whatever the future is, it is not American, not the United States. The US's cultural individualism has been Capitalistically weaponized, and the educational foundation to take the country forward is not there. The US is kaput, and we are merely observing the ugly demise. The future is Asia, with all of western culture going down. Yes, it is not pretty, The failed experiment of American self rule.

>>bsenft+g62
I agree but see it as less dire. All of western culture is not ending; it will be absorbed into a more Asia-dominated culture in much he was Asian culture was subsumed into western for the past couple of hundred years.

And if Asian culture is better educated and more capable of progress, that’s a good thing. Certainly the US has announced loud and clear that this is the end of the line for us.

>>brooks+Pn2
Of course it will not end, western culture just will no longer lead. Despite the sky falling perspective of many, it is simply an attitude adjustment. So one group is no longer #1, and the idea that I was part of that group, ever, was an illusion of propaganda anyway. Life will go on, surprisingly the same.