About me and this review: I don’t identify as a member of the rationalist community, and I haven’t thought much about AI risk. I read AstralCodexTen and used to read Zvi Mowshowitz before he switched his blog to covering AI. Thus, I’ve long had a peripheral familiarity with LessWrong. I picked up IABIED in response to Scott Alexander's review, and ended up looking here to see what reactions were like. After encountering a number of posts wondering how outsiders were responding to the book, I thought it might be valuable for me to write mine down. This is a “semi-outsider “review in that I don’t identify as a member of this community, but I’m not a true outsider in that I was familiar enough with it to post here. My own background is in academic social science and national security, for whatever that's worth. My review presumes you’re already [...]

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Outline:

(01:07) My loose priors going in:

(02:29) To skip ahead to my posteriors:

(03:45) On to the Review:

(08:14) My questions and concerns

(08:33) Concern #1 Why should we assume the AI wants to survive?  If it does, then what exactly wants to survive?

(12:44) Concern #2 Why should we assume that the AI has boundless, coherent drives?

(17:57) #3: Why should we assume there will be no in between?

(21:53) The Solution

(23:35) Closing Thoughts

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First published:
October 13th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ex3fmgePWhBQEvy7F/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies-a-semi-outsider-review

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.