The world was fair, the mountains tall,
In Elder Days before the fall
Of mighty kings in Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
The Western Seas have passed away:
The world was fair in Durin's Day.

J.R.R. Tolkien

I was never meant to work on AI safety. I was never designed to think about superintelligences and try to steer, influence, or change them. I never particularly enjoyed studying the peculiarities of matrix operations, cracking the assumptions of decision theories, or even coding.

I know, of course, that at the very bottom, bits and atoms are all the same — causal laws and information processing.

And yet, part of me, the most romantic and naive part of me, thinks, metaphorically, that we abandoned cells for computers, and this is our punishment.

I was meant, as I saw it, to bring about the glorious transhuman future, in its classical sense. Genetic engineering, neurodevices, DIY biolabs — going hard on biology, going hard on it with extraordinary effort, hubristically, being, you know, awestruck by "endless forms most beautiful" and motivated by the great cosmic destiny of humanity, pushing the proud frontiersman spirit and all that stuff.

I was meant, in other words [...]

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.