by Winston Wendell
Can the threat of AI lead to the awakening of humankind? Thinking about it makes me shudder. The race toward world suicide is accelerating daily, as nations and corporations strive to become the first to achieve AI dominance. Every participant in this race understands the impending existential risk, but almost none of them are willing to give up and let the others reach the goal first.
It is a prisoner’s dilemma, magnified and applied to all of humanity. We all know that every participant in the race will suffer if a single one succeeds. We still create weapons of existential terror because we fear that others will not be rational and halt their research if we do.
However, it seems that the threat of AI can awaken humanity, as it did after every catastrophe in the past. The AI threat is an existential one, and humanity might choose to escape the narrow-eyes race to survive. But will it be in time? I doubt it. The realization of this threat must motivate people to change their thinking and stop the arms race. They must recognize that winning the AI race means losing everything.
