Google cofounder Larry Page thinks superintelligent AI is “just the next step in evolution.” In fact, Page, who's worth about $120 billion, has reportedly argued that efforts to prevent AI-driven extinction and protect human consciousness are “speciesist” and “sentimental nonsense.”

In July, former Google DeepMind senior scientist Richard Sutton — one of the pioneers of reinforcement learning, a major subfield of AI — said that the technology “could displace us from existence,” and that “we should not resist succession.” In a 2015 talk, Sutton said, suppose “everything fails” and AI “kill[s] us all”; he asked, “Is it so bad that humans are not the final form of intelligent life in the universe?”

This is how I begin the cover story for Jacobin's winter issue on AI. Some very influential people openly welcome an AI-driven future, even if humans aren’t part of it.

Whether [...]

---

First published:

Source:

Linkpost URL:
https://jacobin.com/2024/01/can-humanity-survive-ai

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.