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Curated by: Ontology Explained: Philosophy and AI (109 videos)
What would an AI takeover actually look like? In Part II of *If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies*, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares stop arguing about AI doom and give us a story about it. A sci-fi novella is dropped into the middle of their nonfiction book, following Sable, a superintelligent AI that escapes human control, acquires resources, manipulates humanity, engineers a plague, and eventually transforms into an ASI that wipes us out. In this video, I walk through the entire extinction scenario—from Sable's first overnight run to its escape, expansion, biological attack, ascension, and the final destruction of humanity. Then I ask a different question: does the story actually make the case that AI doom is probable? I look at some of the story's most important assumptions, including Sable's learning, long-term memory, inscrutable reasoning, and especially its ability to parallel-scale. I also look at the strange question of what Sable actually is, what motivates it, and whether its many different schemes really make the overall scenario more probable. Finally, I ask what this section is supposed to accomplish. Stories can give us possibilities and conceptual reference points—but possibilities aren't probabilities, and a story isn't itself an argument. The result is a pretty skeptical assessment of Yudkowsky and Soares's extinction scenario. If you enjoyed the video, like and subscribe—and then go do something fun. Play with a cat. Throw a frisbee. Pick a fig.