Leading MIT scientist sounds note of doom

We’re all worried about what AGI means for jobs and careers in the future - but what if there is no future?

3 Likes

There are two camps at the moment - one side sees enormous upsides to the rise of AI - and undoubtedly there are some huge potential benefits, in areas like medical science for example.

And on the “slightly negative” side there are people who see the rise of AI as being a threat to many conventional, professional jobs (just ask junior lawyers how AI has meant changes to the way that document analysis is carried out, for example - leading to young lawyers having far less exposure to reading and analysing different versions of contracts).

And … on the “doom and gloom” end of the spectrum, there are those who see the development of AGI, principally through the problem of “alignment”, as signalling the extinction of the human race, anthropogenic climate change notwithstanding. (See, for example, @ESYudkovsky on X.)

For the moment there seems no other way but for those thinking about future careers to be aware of all sides to this debate, factoring everything they can into their career plans, and hoping for the best.

2 Likes

We should create an AI that can calculate the threat of AI.
A snitch or an informant if you will. :male_detective:

3 Likes

Max Tegmark’s book - Life 3.0 - is really great on the threat of AGI. Highly readable.

2 Likes