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Comment by MisterTea | Hacker News Reader

I heard a story recently from a friend who mingles with a lot of tech and finance people. One conversation happened after a meeting between a group which deeply bothers him to this day. The conversation basically went like this: "How will all the humans rendered obsolete by AI die?" Answers ranged form "Maybe they will die in riots" or die of starvation from food shortages, or hey, gunned down by AI drones.

I asked him "Are you sure it wasn't dark humor" - "NO! They were dead serious."

There's a cult around AI, not the users, but people with wealth and power who would be more than happy if there were less people. A lot less people.

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I've heard of similar things coming from Marc Andreessen, even before the AI boom. There's some scary people in power

Edit: found the article I remembered https://prospect.org/2024/04/24/2024-04-24-my-dinner-with-an...

> I brought up the ordinary comforts of kinship, friendship, craft, memory, legend, lore, skills passed down across generations, and other benefits that small towns provide: things that make human beings human beings. I pointed out that there must be something in the kind of places he grew up in worth preserving. I dared venture that it is always worth mourning when a venerable human community passes from the Earth; that maybe people are more than just figures finding their proper price on the balance sheet of life …

> And that’s when the man in the castle with the seven fireplaces said it.

> “I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.”

There really does seem to be a cult of AI successionists who want the AI to kill them and the rest of humanity so that it can act with impunity.

Obviously these people are dangerous lunatics akin to Heaven’s Gate or the People’s Temple and need to be treated as such.

Yes, it's absolutely a cult. I'd even go so far as to say it's a death cult.

I don't fear genAI even a little. I am terrified and angered by genAI companies and their most hardcore supporters, though. I think they present a genuine danger to us all.

I mean half the US seems to be ran by death cults thinly disguised as religions. The fact this spills over into everything else is not surprising.

Death cults that will kill you because of AI are the same group that will instill their values into the AI to ensure it kills it all.

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