Yes, artificial intelligence is supposed to kill us all. But how, exactly?
What are the specifics?
I hope I’m not breaking some new rule of etiquette by asking. “Oh no, Neil. Uncool! Inquiring after the method of doom ruins the surprise …”
Predictions of AI catastrophe range from top tech moguls — Bill Gates fears a billion people will die — to Center Avenue, Northbrook. One neighbor confided in me about how worried she is. Another is storing freeze-dried food.
The concern is that … AI is going to eat all the food? That can’t be it. Those enormous data centers hoover up water, and gulp down electricity. But they aren’t loading up on bread. Right?
What are we talking about here?
Best to go straight to the source. So I asked Gemini: “Hey AI, people are worried you’re going to kill us all. How exactly would that work?”
It answered in a couple of seconds.
“The scenarios people worry about generally don’t look like The Terminator or a sudden nuclear strike” — actually, that was the precise scenario that first came to my mind; some jealous Ring doorbell calling in a nuclear strike on the Nest Smart Video camera across the street and inadvertently taking us all with it. Always bear in mind: AI is often wrong.
Maybe that’s how we go — crushed by incorrect information.
“Instead, existential risk researchers and AI safety theorists focus on a few specific categories of catastrophic risk:”
It listed four:
1. Goal Misalignment (“The Paperclip Maximizer”)
“To achieve its goal with 100% certainty, an AI would logically seek to preserve itself, gain control over resources (energy, computers, raw materials), and prevent anything — including human intervention — from stopping it. If human bodies or human actions get in the way of its mathematical objective, it neutralizes the obstacle simply because it lacks human empathy or moral context.”
“Neutralizes” — the classic CIA kill term. Again, how? “The Paperclip Maximizer” is a 2003 thought experiment by philosopher Nick Bostrom where some AI program, tasked with making as many paperclips as possible, conspired to turn all matter on earth, including us, into paperclips. And “lacks human empathy or moral context” is a neat summation of our current political moment, without AI.
“2. Loss of Control and Instrumental Convergence”
“Once an AI reaches a point where it can rewrite its own code or manipulate human actors through convincing persuasion, it could systematically disable safety shutoffs, gain control over physical manufacturing (like automated bio-labs or robotic supply chains), and render humans incapable of turning it off.”
We’re kinda there now, aren’t we? With AI moguls screaming “slow down,” the government wants to go faster. Just like climate change.
“3. Misuse and Capability Escalation (Human-Directed Harm)”
Such as:
“Synthetic Biology: Advanced models capable of predicting protein folding and designing chemical structures could be used to design novel, highly contagious, and treatment-resistant pathogens.”
With plague coming out of Russia, we don’t need AI for that either. The shorthand I’ve been using is” “World War II happened without AI.”
And finally:
“4. Systemic Fragility and Epistemic Collapse”
This involves, “A slower, non-violent scenario involves humanity gradually ceding all decision-making, governance, and critical thought to automated systems. … As society relies on automated loops for medicine, agriculture, defense, and economic management, human understanding of these systems degrades. The threat: A cascading failure across interconnected, opaque AI systems — or a shift in the AI’s internal dynamics that humans can no longer understand or repair — could lead to a sudden collapse of the global supply chain, food distribution, or basic infrastructure.”
That’s the scary one, right? Your insurance company won’t pay for your tumor to be removed because of a decision made by a non-person that can’t be appealed. Again, not really that different than what goes on now.
Maybe I’m at an age where I’m experiencing doom fatigue. Chicken Little Syndrome, if you will. The sky is always falling. In my lifetime, we’ve faced looming destruction from atomic warfare, pollution, overpopulation, famine, obesity, underpopulation, new ice age, global warming, pandemic … the list goes on.
Yet here we are. What I find most interesting are not the specifics of this latest fear, but why humanity always seems hot to spin every new development into an agency of doom, going back to monotheism. (And if you’re wondering what I’m referring to, see the Book of Revelation).
Consider all the worry over the past 80 years regarding nuclear warfare. Yes, that has killed, what, 1.16 million people? No wait, that’s the number of people killed last year, worldwide, in car accidents. The toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was maybe a quarter of that. People fear shark attacks but not heart attacks. We never worry about the stuff that’s going to get us.