september 10 1ak
Today I did a bunch of stuff and had a lot of great conversations today but one of the highpoints was the moment I sunk my teeth into a Lemonhead slice at Mac's and remembered just how perfect the right piece of pizza at the right temperature eaten at the right time can feel.
I fucking loved that bite. I thought, during that bite, "man, if only life could be this simple and delightful." And then, a moment later, "actually, life can and should be this simple and delightful." I am not ashamed to tell you that I sat in that moment for an obscene amount of time.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about life lately for reasons including but not limited to a guy who quit Anthropic suggested there was a ~10% chance that an AI super-intelligence would kill us all by 2030.
Some pullquotes, if you don't feel like clicking through:
The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.
A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?” At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first - they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.
So I'm sitting there eating my slice and actively thinking about all the things that I wouldn't have to worry about if an AI super-intelligence decided to merk us all. I wouldn't have to stress about affording retirement or buying a house for starters, which would be a load off my mind because navigating (or trying to navigate) this bone dry job market is fucking killing me. I also wouldn't have to live amidst the downstream implications and likely consequences of our culture's increasing illiteracy and incuriosity (itself a byproduct of AI and the way tech companies have shaped the web over the last 20 years).
I wouldn't have to grow old and infirm. I wouldn't have to watch or otherwise experience the worst parts of the (cough, cough, anthropogenic) climate crisis. I wouldn't have to share oxygen with Yankees fans, MAGA losers, looksmaxxers, racists, or people who don't tip.
I could just be a guy who loved his partner, his friends, and his family a handful of family members until the machines took us out. It's not what I want, but it wouldn't be the worst outcome.
If four years from now our AI overlords went full god mode and sent billions of drones out into the world to shoot and bomb us all, it stands to reason we wouldn't be able to do anything about it. There's something freeing about that.
In the late 1990s, a friend asked me whether or not I would want to know the exact date and time of my death if such an option were available. I said no. It was the correct answer at the time. Today I think I'd want to know. If someone said "so, like, I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but in exactly four years a drone loaded with C4 is going to fly into your home and detonate you into the next life, can you imagine how much living I would fit into the next four years?
This post went off the rails, but I don't mind. We're all living on borrowed time anyway.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch
🌳 grass
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
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