Single source for human extinction
As computer scientists and “statistical physicists,” fret over the impending extinction of humans by AI, it is possible that they have lost perspective. If you sit in a dark room surrounded by Silicon, making algorithms that make your heart jump, it is possible that you don’t know what the world is all about. The latest hype, the Large Language Models (LLMs), are neither artificial nor intelligent, as stochastic parrots based on history never produced insights. History is for fools and only the future matters.
However, there is a single source of extinction for humans and that is ignorance. There are many symptoms, religion and extreme wealth disparity being two of the most important. The former is an expression of ignorance when visions of fiction take over the human brain, stressed by poverty and tribulation and the latter, a lack of understanding of what matters. As the billionaires influence autocrats with money and the rest struggle to make a living, it is clear that extinction is probable.
Humans are close to extinction and AI should be the least of their concerns. As the blue planet spins ever faster in distress, as its magnetic poles shift by the day, as its iron core slows to kill life giving magnetism, the greatest mass extinction, rivaling the Permian-Triassic is well on its way. To accelerate this process, humans have embarked on systematically destroying their delicate greenhouse.
The weak and the weary will fall first and the few who try to escape to Mars will also perish as ignorance is universal. Religious autocrats will fall fast as their prayers will not be answered and their people will begin to realize reality. Revolutions will follow but this time there may not be a future for those who rebelled. To top it off, a few more pandemics are queued in sequence.
Curing ignorance is possible but unlikely. It takes but a single axis of education. Such education will be concerned about how one seeks data, not anecdotally but in aggregate, forms hypothesis and test it. More generally, how does one determine what she hears, reads and sees is true. This skill is easy to impart but not a single educational institution is focused on this. Those who are fascinated by the Fermi paradox, should have their answer already. There is nothing more ignorant than those on Earth and no ET will ever attempt a trip to the definition of hell.
Extinction has started, but it is not because of AI.