Ep. 377: The Case Against Superintelligence
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A couple weeks ago, the technophilosopher and AI critic Eliezer Yadkowski went on Ezra Klein's podcast. Their episode had a cheery title, How Afraid of the AI Apocalypse Should We Be? Yatkowski, who recently co-authored a book titled, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, has been warning about the dangers of rogue AI since the early 2000s. But it's been in the last half decade. as AI began to advance more quickly, that Yudkowski's warnings are now being taken more seriously.
This is why Ezra Klein had him on. I mean if you're worried about AI taking over the world, Yadkowski is one of the people you want to talk to. Think of him as offering the case for the worst case scenario. So I decided I would listen to this interview too. Did Yakowski end up convincing me?
that my fear of extinction should be raised, that AI was on a path to killing us all? Well, the short answer is no, not at all. And today I want to show you why. We'll break down Yakowski's arguments into their key points and then we'll respond to them one by one. So if you've been worried about recent chapter about AI taking over the world or if like me you've grown frustrated by these sort of fast and loose prophecies of the apocalypse
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