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I can think of several computer programs that are stored in big 5.1/4 floppy discs that could end humanity in... half an hour.

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It would require an authorized human to load the floppy into the drive and make it go. And there's nothing special about that process being done in code, it could just as well be done by people flipping switches manually.

There's just no plausible way, in the real world, that a computer program running in some datacenter is going to make this happen. Or anything of any dire existential consequence. It's not a real threat.

I think I disagree! You can always manipulate a human. It's true tho that this particular example has a myriad of failsafes, so the actual example I wrote is less than interesting.

> You can always manipulate a human.

Yes, but to make "apocalyptic" scenarios happen your AI would need to manipulate at least millions of people. So far it's not yet clear they can successfully manipulate even one, or even that "manipulate" is a coherent concept, since LLMs pretty clearly have no agency or intrinsic goals. So like... I guess if we start seeing AI systems autonomously throwing elections and starting wars I'd be more concerned? It doesn't look likely anytime soon.

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