The subtitle of the doom bible to be published by AI extinction prophets Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares later this month is "Why superhuman AI would kill us all." But it really should be "Why superhuman AI WILL kill us all," because even the coauthors don't believe that the world will take the necessary measures to stop AI from eliminating all non-super humans. The book is beyond dark, reading like notes scrawled in a dimly lit prison cell the night before a dawn execution. When I meet these self-appointed Cassandras, I ask them outright if they believe that they personally will meet their ends through some machination of superintelligence. The answers come promptly: "yeah" and "yup."

This article is from Big Technology, a newsletter by Alex Kantrowitz. Shortly after ChatGPT's release last year, a cadre of critics captured headlines and made noise on social media claiming that A.I. would soon kill us. As wondrous as a computer speaking in natural language might be, it could use that intelligence to level the planet. The thinking went mainstream via letters calling for research pauses and 60 Minutes interviews amplifying existential concerns. Leaders like Barack Obama publicly worried about A.I. autonomously hacking the financial system--or worse.

Forbes reports that "most AI projects fail"; Techrepublic puts the number at 85%. How do we reconcile this reality with claims of AI as representing an "existential threat" such as those from Elon Musk and futurism.com? Often called AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), the idea is a general-purpose, human-like intelligence like Hal from 2001 or the Terminator. First, all new technology by its nature is disruptive, and AI today is no exception. The cotton gin, the telephone, and certainly the internet and personal computers all created massive shifts in employment and commerce.

Future building, it has to be said, is tough–really tough. Especially when the aim is to create a future that's better than the past, and not just one that's different. The irony is that we live in a time when there is so much incredible potential to build a better future. And yet, we have more ways of destroying, or at least seriously diminishing, what lies in front of us, than ever before. On the one hand there are the in-your-face planetary threats–the charismatic megafauna of the global threats world–threats like climate change, environmental pollution and loss of biodiversity; all of them having their roots in our myopic profligacy as a species.

What if we could create "god" in our image? Founder of modern psychiatry Sigmund Freud hypothesized that man invented the concept of god. Ever the killjoy in his quest for joy, the philosopher Nietzsche famously went so far as to say that modern man "killed god." Since their time, modern science and technology have sought to resurrect god. But, if god does not really exist, then it is necessary to create god.

According to the Sun, scientists at a high level South Korean university are developing an army of killer robots that could wipe out humanity. The university is called KAIST and they launched their robot weapons program in February. Science professors from around the world are calling for an end to this program already. A professor named Toby Walsh from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia has organized a boycott of the program that now includes 49 other researchers. Everyone wants the hottest new tech.

There are a lot of predictions about AI-induced apocalypse out there, and organizations like OpenAI are trying to discover the best way to create safe artificial intelligence--but rarely do these efforts address the AI directly. A new paper published (login required) on Academia.edu, "This text is addressed to any future AI and is written in the way that should affect AI's future behavior," a preamble to the letter states. "The text increases the probability that future AI will be benevolent. The text doesn't need any other implementation except ensuring that future AI will read it in early stages of its development, and the AI will consider that there is a high probability that the text has some correct ideas in it."

Some people will see abundant possibility; others, the period at the end of humanity's story, as they conflate AI with killer robots and super-intelligent machines that will come to regard us as pets--or worse. A Stanford University-hosted project is under way to look past all that--past the pop-culture takes on AI, the warnings from tech thinkers, and the breathless hype about assistive AI tools in our phones and other devices. The project was set up to take the long view of AI--a very, very long view. The study is an ongoing endowed project, and its goal is for a standing committee of scientists to regularly commission reports that take expansive looks at how AI will touch different aspects of daily life. The first of those reports, the 28,000-word "Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030," has just been released.

Some people will see abundant possibility; others, the period at the end of humanity's story, as they conflate AI with killer robots and super-intelligent machines that will come to regard us as pets--or worse. A Stanford University-hosted project is under way to look past all that--past the pop-culture takes on AI, the warnings from tech thinkers, and the breathless hype about assistive AI tools in our phones and other devices. The project was set up to take the long view of AI--a very, very long view. The study is an ongoing endowed project, and its goal is for a standing committee of scientists to regularly commission reports that take expansive looks at how AI will touch different aspects of daily life. The first of those reports, the 28,000-word "Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030," has just been released.

My name is Josh Pause, and I'm trying to build a machine that can think. Have you ever stopped to ponder just how deliciously absurd that idea is? As a matter of fact, I'm not sure which is more absurd to me: a machine that can think, or, the fact that everyone around me assumes that this machine is both inevitable and destined to rise up and destroy us. These naysayers would have me believe that I am some sort of mad scientist, foolishly chasing my own blind ambitions towards the detriment of mankind. They would have me doubt my own intuition, my own instincts, and my own internal definitions of right and wrong. While we're on the subject of Stanley Kubrick, here's a fun bit of widely-believed trivia: In the late 1960s, NASA went to Stanley Kubrick for help in staging a fake moon landing.