An AI Apocalypse, but Just for You

For Halloween, I like to talk about spooky scenarios. And these days, the most trendy one is an AI apocalypse. You can run into a wild range of ideas for how AI could go wrong, of varying plausibility. They go from hacks shutting down key infrastructure or engineered viruses, to taking over nuclear arsenals and sending out armies of killer robots, all the way to nanotech that devours the world and flawlessly manipulative plans that end up filling space with computers simulating hell at the speed of light. And of course, on the other end, the possibility that banks suddenly become convinced that the investments underpinning AI companies’ trillion dollar evaluations aren’t going to pay, collapsing the economy. So, lots of things to be scared of this year! But in all of those scenarios, at least we suffer together. If civilization cracks like an egg, everyone who survives has to adapt and figure out a new path forward. And if everyone’s dead, well, everyone’s dead. There’s something…