Reply To: “What Should Be My Next Move?”

There have been a lot of calls from experts for companies to pause AI R&D for 6 months to a year so that humanity as a whole can take stock and fully think through the possibilities – and consequences – of what we’re doing, and set conscientious parameters. I believe there’s a formal petition. Of course that won’t happen.

There are some thinkers who suggest that AI is the single greatest existential threat facing humanity right now, surpassing even climate change. To some, that might sound like a bunch of fear-mongering from olds afraid of change, but it makes me think of the Great Filter theory. It posits that intelligent life is common in the universe, but the reason we’re not encountering it is because every civilization reaches a point (the “Great Filter”) where their technological progress outpaces their wisdom and results in their destruction – resource exhaustion, nuclear disaster, causing climate change, underestimating AI.