13 metaphors to give the flavor of why sufficiently advanced A.I. could be extremely dangerous

April 2, 2023

1. Suppose a new species evolves on earth with the same intellectual, planning, and coordination abilities relative to us that we have relative to chimps. Chimps are faster and stronger than most humans - why don't they run the show? 2. Suppose aliens show up on earth that are far smarter than the smartest among us at all cognitive tasks. They have specific goals that aren't fully aligned with ours, are completely unconstrained by human morality, and don't value our survival. What happens ne...

Tough Questions about Utopia

July 16, 2017

Some tough questions for you about utopia (along with my very tentative and very likely wrong guesses for answers): If you were attempting to design a true utopia for ten million people on an obscure island deep out in the ocean, and you had total control over institutions and unlimited money, but you could NOT change human nature or human psychology then:(a) what would you hope people would spend their time doing in this utopia?(b) how would you incentivize people to actually spend their t...