This is part one of a two part episode.

With the end of a long AI winter and the rise of large language models and platforms like ChatGPT, we’re experiencing a renaissance of AI doomerism, and people making wild and bold predictions of the incoming robot apocalypse.

It’s almost quaint, in a way. Charming. This week, we’re looking at the AI doomer movement, who predict we’ll all be dead at the hands of ultrasmart computers in a few short years. In part one, we chart a course of its history, and the unusual places it developed over the past couple of decades.

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