I don’t know whether the wave of artificial superintelligence is cresting, about to break. But even if it is, I don’t think the lesson from the western canon is that it portends our doom. The recurring story throughout western literature is not really that the things we create sow the seeds of our destruction, but that they sow the seeds of our temporary despair. Despite the calamities we bring upon ourselves, humanity is–in the stories at least–remarkably (surprisingly, even) resilient to them.

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