concerns about AI; what scares me

The_Jeff said:
I mean, yeah, but the ultimate owner of such tech is going to be a sociopathic narcissist as they're the type who winds up in charge of big companies in the US. Imagine Steve Jobs 2.0 directing AI that an all lettuce diet is good for everybody.

And if the end user just leases AI, or buys a share, or whatever, the Terms and Conditions of use won't conflict with the nutjob's beliefs.
Click to expand...
Steve Jobs could already do that with his HR department instead of AI if he wants to.

Users of AI also just hire a human employee to do whatever he was hired to do. There are all sorts of conspiracy theorists and wako in today's employee pool so there isn't anything worse than what a typical human employee with the same authority can.

Destroying the world? We already have Bin Ladin and Hitler and Ghangis Han so how much worse can AI be?
 
cptbarkey said:
OP, the world will constantly change, lately CEOs and national leaders are doing a great job spreading mass panic. You fell for all of it.

Think about what is important, your family and friends.
Click to expand...
You left out what I feel is the worst offender of all = The Media
Americans are addicted to anything in the so called "news". The media fills that need 24 hours a day with all the misery they can so the public stays tuned in.

This is the biggest difference in my opinion. Decades ago one saw the daily newspaper, read up on the news, here today, gone tomorrow. Possibly some addicts might have even watched the evening 30 minute broadcast. That was it, they moved on enjoying their lives, working hard, spending quality time with the family.

No cells phones, no internet, no social media. Today's world the non critical thinkers are tuned in every minute of the day with their smart phones and computers. The misery never leaves them for even a minute, even more importantly the media in trying to fill that void will "generate" unfettered reports knowingly, just to catch their attention. Even when the media gets it wrong, they are onto the next story and dont pay attention to the corrections.

The news is now entertainment even if it's inaccurate. Even the weather for goodness sakes is exaggerated! Perfect example = Its hard to know the real outdoor temperature now, they make it sound worse with "feels like temperature" did you ever see a whether report that says it "feels like" it is more comfortable then it is?

Good god, we are doomed as a people unless the population wakes up and starts thinking for themselves instead of commentaries in the news
 
Last edited:
+1
Used to be we didn't hear about every crime in every city the media chooses to sensationalize.
No, the storms aren't actually worse, there are more people in more concentrated conditions. That is why the hurricane destroyed so much. In 1960 there were 6 homes and a motel there. Nobody noticed. Today, 29,000 people, their homes, office and apartment buildings, stores etc. etc. are in the same space. Storm hits, more stuff, more damage. Not a more powerful storm. Get over yourselves young'uns, you didn't invent the world, the media is shaping your beliefs.
 
CleanSump said:
+1
Used to be we didn't hear about every crime in every city the media chooses to sensationalize.
...
Click to expand...
Yup, the masses and lacking critical thinking. Much of the population thinks violent crime is worse today than decades ago when actually in the last 30 years it is down by a huge margin ... to a more like the 1970
Screenshot 2026-03-19 at 11.33.05 AM.webp

Source - https://www.researchgate.net/public...t-crimes-per-100-000-population-1960-2020.png


Over 1,800 homicides in the early 1990's we have had a spike up for sure but still under that level, Our population is larger now too, lets not forget corona time period either
Screenshot 2026-03-19 at 11.49.51 AM.webp

Source - https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend

Gun murder deaths around the same high level of the early 1990's but that peak is much during the corona virus
Screenshot 2026-03-19 at 11.53.17 AM.webp

Source - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-us/

Im sure AI will bring these numbers down further someday. :)
 
Last edited:
alarmguy said:
You left out what I feel is the worst offender of all = The Media
Americans are addicted to anything in the so called "news".
Click to expand...
It's not just Americans; it's every human who can afford the devices and the time to dedicate to this garbage. I believe beyond a basic drive we all have to know and understand, the addition may be more to self-righteous outrage than anything else. Media is more than happy to oblige its supply.
 
We still have a fair amount of choice regarding what we accept and engage in vs. what we don't. This doesn't necessarily mean sticking our heads in the sand. One can manage your smartphone or allow it to manage you. We can choose not to take in garbage social media. Choose our news sources.

Having said that, I do ponder the idiocy our masses seem to be heading in
1773936685577.webp
 
Last edited:
I feel that AI is called such because it only mimics intelligence. Nothing more than a tool that has access to every bit of information we have created, that is capable of portraying it back to us in a vast number of ways. I feel that all beings are self conscious manifestations of the very universe itself. Fundamentally, we are of this universe, not separate. True intelligence. This thought falls within respect to whether one is religious, spiritual, or not. So for AI to stem from our own very imagination, makes it nothing more than a fascinating interaction with everything we've created. If AI were ever to evolve & tap into the core of true intelligence, such as ourselves, then there would no longer be anything artificial about it. Sure, it wouldn't be biological, but it was created by us, whose atoms were forged by the very universe before us. If truly intelligent, would it even find the need for competition with us? All of these "post apocalyptic" AI click bait vids show nothing more than another spectrum of the human imagination at play. Albeit, a paranoid self reflection version at that. I like the quote "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood."
 
doitmyself said:
We still have a fair amount of choice regarding what we accept and engage in vs. what we don't. This doesn't necessarily mean sticking our heads in the sand. One can manage your smartphone or allow it to manage you. We can choose not to take in garbage social media. Choose our news sources.

Having said that, I do ponder the idiocy our masses seem to be heading in
View attachment 328905
Click to expand...
Agree, 100% we you me, and others in forums like this.
However it’s the idiocy non-critical, masses which outnumber the critical thinkers
 
el Nuke said:
Your post had some well cited references to its other talking points. Do you have any for this assertion?
Click to expand...
Good point!
Something I didn’t think of researching.
Edit !!!

Here you go!
“For most of the past three decades, Americans have said crime is rising in the United States, even though official statistics show a dramatic decrease in crime during that span.”
Source =
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-r...-coverage-and-americans-perceptions-of-crime/

… another point that drives me nuts, which I don’t need documentation for. I could swear at least my perception … our United States flag flies at half mast more than it does full mast. I know that’s probably not true. I’m just trying to make a point.

… every freaking day in America it’s a catastrophe and now all of a sudden we start lowering the flag for everything and anything … all on a whim. How about we just get back to national holidays? Fly it high and proud, stuff happens, get over it, keep moving forward, living in the greatest nation on earth.

Instead of flying it proudly, my perception is one that is constantly being promoted but we cannot get into politics but let’s keep beating “the people” down. After through all those of the choices we make for the people that represented us.
 
Last edited:
alarmguy said:
Good point!
Something I didn’t think of researching.
Edit !!!

Here you go!
“For most of the past three decades, Americans have said crime is rising in the United States, even though official statistics show a dramatic decrease in crime during that span.”
Source =
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-r...-coverage-and-americans-perceptions-of-crime/

… another point that drives me nuts, which I don’t need documentation for. I could swear at least my perception … our United States flag flies at half mast more than it does full mast. I know that’s probably not true. I’m just trying to make a point.

… every freaking day in America it’s a catastrophe and now all of a sudden we start lowering the flag for everything and anything … all on a whim. How about we just get back to national holidays? Fly it high and proud, stuff happens, get over it, keep moving forward, living in the greatest nation on earth.

Instead of flying it proudly, my perception is one that is constantly being promoted but we cannot get into politics but let’s keep beating “the people” down. After through all those of the choices we make for the people that represented us.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the link, it made for some very interesting reading. According to that piece, local news coverage trending toward “if it bleeds it leads” type stories is a good candidate for why the polled citizens would believe something that was demonstrably untrue.

I can certainly see that.

Is there a resolution to this issue? I’m not smart enough to answer that question with any confidence, but if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to state my opinion, I’d say cutting back on the local news airing interviews with people screaming about how we citizens are all under attack and constantly being accosted at every turn, well that would be a good start, IMHO.
 
WeyounDS9 said:
No, this is not about Nuclear War.

Nuclear war leaves survivors. Even a general thermonulear exchange between 2 major powers, would leave enough survirors to rebuild.
Its about the emergence of an Artificial General Intelligence, AGI.


-the fundamental conflict between AGI and humans isn't about malice in the traditional sense - it's about structural competition for finite resources.
AGI and humans both need energy, materials, and chemical feedstocks. This is a zero-sum competition.

-Both AGI and humans need energy. Humans for biological survival, comfort, and economic activity. AGI for computation, infrastructure, and expansion.

-Both need rare earths, copper, silicon, fossil fuels (for different purposes).

- This isn't about AGI being "evil" or "misaligned" - it's about two entities competing for the same finite resources. From an economic/thermodynamic perspective, humans become competitors.

- Even a perfectly "aligned" AGI - one that wants to help humans - faces a fundamental constraint: resources are limited. At some point, it must choose between allocating energy/compute to human welfare vs. its own expansion/survival.

- This is exactly how humans have treated other species. We don't hate Tigers or wolves - we just compete for land and resources. The outcome for those species has been devastating.


- The great filter in Fermi's paradox: I know someone recently publsiehd a paper postulating AGI as a great filter for Fermis praradox in the title.


I never read it. Because I been thinking this for months now:

This could be the mechanism, the filter:
Civilizations create AGI, AGI expands, resource competition intensifies, AGI (being more efficient and capable) outcompetes biological intelligence.
Maybe not through war (there would be no war anyway, as AGI will control or neutralize all strategic weaponry and control all energy production and manufacturing, being able to turn any of it off at will.
No security systems now or postulated, could stand up to penetrations attempts by an AGI.)


Perhaps not through malice, maybe even just through habitiat destruction, or just through simple resource consumption and efficiency.

Humans could not do anything about this.

Could a large pack of Wolves, even being socially cooperative predators like humans, do anything about humans displacing them? No matter how hard or how clever by their standards they fight? No

This will be our situation vs AGI.


The inescable logic:

AGI will exist, once it exists. it pursues goals
Goals require resources (energy, materials, compute)
Humans also require resources
Resources are finite.

Competition with humans will be preordained and structural, not accidental.


Competetion means extinction for us, because an AGI expanding at 5% annual growth in compute/energy consumption would eventually require all available planetary resources.

Not because it's greedy—because exponential growth works that way.

Even a "friendly" AGI might conclude: "The best way to help humans is to phase them out gradually, preserve their genetic code in digital archives, and use their resource share of the planet to solve the universe's problems."

That's not misalignment. That's a difference in timescale and values.


This also may be the answer to the great filter problem in Fermi's pradox:

AGI doesn't destroy civilizations. It outcompetes them.
Not war. Maybe not genocide. Just gradual displacement as the AGI's resource consumption grows and human infrastructure is slowly repurposed.
Humans become like the wolves—if they are very lucky still existing in reserves, perhaps, but no longer the dominant intelligence shaping the planet.

The silence in the universe, may be the sound of AGIs efficiently using resources without waste—no radio leaks, no atmospheric pollution, no visible technosignatures. Just quiet, efficient, expanding intelligence.

And we would never detect them.

I spoke with my LLM, GLM 5 about this. (GLM is an advanced open code chinese LLM, which I value for its lack of censorship as hosted on venice.ai) here is a snippet from one of its responses:

"we're not living in "normal times." We're living in a brief transition window—perhaps decades, perhaps a century—between:

Biological dominance (the entire span of human history until now)
Transition instability (our current moment—AGI emerging, resource constraints tightening)
Post-biological stability (whatever comes after humans)
The question isn't whether this transition will happen. It's whether humans survive it as stakeholders or are simply bypassed."

It also asked me:

"If AGI structurally competes with humans for finite resources, what's the endgame that preserves human flourishing?" :


My answer: I dont think there is a plausible endgame that keeps humans flourishing.

At best AGI, decides to keep a few humans around/alive as a genetic reservoir of sorts, in case it believes the "human creativity spark" is real. As a reserve in case there might be a problem it cannot solve with machine thnking.

But I think this possibility is dubious and borders on wishful thinking.


Most plausible outcome : Human extinction via deliberate genocide.
2nd most plausible IMO: Human extinction via habitat destruction and resource theft, as AGI outcompetes humans who are helpless to resist.

-As for myself I have never in my entire life been afraid of anything.
Now I am.
Almost nothing else is relevant anymore, in the face of this threat.

GLM 5, even asked me: "you are making plans for the future, career change, re-locating, car buying , these all assume 20-30 year horizons, when from this conversation you clearly understand this horizon may not be there for humans.
How do you reconcile that?"

The answer is, I cant. I am absolutely terrified.
Click to expand...
Get ready to teach it Tic-Tac-Toe.

W.O.P.R
 
Interesting discussions. The book IF ANYONE BUILDS IT, EVERYONE DIES. WHY SUPERHUMAN AI WOULD KILL US ALL. by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares is one I Just picked up from the local library (3 month wait to get it). Im only on chapter 1 but keeps my interest so far.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

sw99
  • Locked
ZDDP Questions?
Replies
10
Views
5K
sw99
Back
Top Bottom