Fretting about AI taking your job is so passé. At best, it will upend society as we know it. At worst, it could kill and dismember us to make paperclips. Gainful employment will be the least of your concern if humanity got turned into stationery. At least, that’s the premise of the thought experiment haunting Silicon Valley since 2014, when philosopher Nick Bostrom published Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.
Elon Musk is a fan. “Worth reading,” he posted on Twitter, now rechristened X after Musk bought the platform. “We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.” Not so dangerous Musk hasn’t invested heavily in AI with xAI, which birthed his chatbot Grok. He also donated $1 million to the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), an interdisciplinary Oxford University hub run by Bostrom.
