What happens in the scenario where a super-intelligence just uses social engineering and a human is his arms and legs?
Who needs arm & leg if you can make the humans kill each other?
Honestly you probably don’t even need to exist to do that.
Humans have been trying hard to do that on their own.
What are you talking about? We all live in peace and harmony here.
Gosh, I want to kill my neighbor.
Well, there’s a complete lack of imagination for you.
I think a sufficient “Doom Scenario” would be an AI that is widespread and capable enough to poison the well of knowledge we ask it to regurgitate back at us out of laziness.
That’s pretty much social media today.
You best start believing in societal collapse stories, cause you’re in one.
There will be more than enough humans willing to help AI kill the others first, before realizing that “kill all humans” actually meant “kill all humans”.
Still need humans for that sweet, sweet maintenance.
Temporarily.
Meanwhile, the power grid, traffic controls, and myriad infrastructure & adjacent internet-connected software will be using AI, if not already.
I’m pretty sure all of the things you listed run on Pentium 4s.
doesn’t take a lot to imagine a scenario in which a lot of people die due to information manipulation or the purposeful disabling of safety systems. doesn’t take a lot to imagine a scenario where a superintelligent AI manipulates people into being its arms and legs (babe, wake up, new conspiracy theory just dropped - roko is an AI playing the long game and the basilisk is actually a recruiting tool). doesn’t take a lot to imagine an AI that’s capable of seizing control of a lot of the world’s weapons and either guiding them itself or taking advantage of onboard guidance to turn them against their owners, or using targeted strikes to provoke a war (this is a sub-idea of manipulating people into being its arms and legs). doesn’t take a lot to imagine an AI that’s capable of purposefully sabotaging the manufacture of food or medicine in such a way that it kills a lot of people before detection. doesn’t take a lot to imagine an AI capable of seizing and manipulating our traffic systems in such a way to cause a bunch of accidental deaths and injuries.
But overall my rebuttal is that this AI doom scenario has always hinged on a generalized AI, and that what people currently call “AI” is a long, long way from a generalized AI. So the article is right, ChatGPT can’t kill millions of us. Luckily no one was ever proposing that chatGPT could kill millions of us.
