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Comment by josefritzishere | Hacker News Reader

AI presents an existential threat to the continued existence of Homo sapiens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_crisis

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How so?

Well not for any reason given in that Wikipedia link because it's about something else entirely.

But humans have driven multiple species to extinction and destroyed pretty much all their natural predators. They didn't do that by being stronger or faster or having bigger teeth and claws. They did it by being smarter than the dumb animals.

So it's clearly and obviously a terrible idea to create something smarter than us, in case we get the same treatment.

AI isn't smarter than humans. That's a grossly inaccurate statement. It consumes an obscene amount of resources to replace tedious human tasks in a mediocre way. It's stridently average, but not scalably average.

It rather obviously is. It can converse on a thousand topics, in 20 different languages, and produce poetry and song off the cuff.

You just think that because it doesn't know about your tiny little niche in as much detail as you, that makes you smarter.

If I gave a general knowledge test to an AI vs you, who would win?

It can string together enough words to male mid poetry and sounds to make mid music. It has no creative ability, it is literally a mathematical system that guesses what is most likely to be the correct next token based on averages from its training data. It it physically incapable of creating anything that is not already in the training data.

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