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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

> Real experts can explain their position plainly. That has not happened here.

It has, over, and over, and over. There is literally a book on it. https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/

I read Bostrom's Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies in 2014. It was interesting, but not terribly persuasive. Does If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies contain arguments that would be new to me after reading Superintelligence?

I would personally expect so, but your mileage may vary. Controlling for the fact that you didn't find the former persuasive, my first thought would be that the latter might help. Among other things, it is much more specific and detailed in various ways, not least of which being informed by an additional 11 years of history. The former was not written in a world of pervasive AI, or with current AI architecture in mind; the latter has that context.

I'm aware of the book, it feels like vibes to me, and is unconvincing. Too many offramps between here and there.

You said "Real experts can explain their position plainly.". The experts have explained their position plainly. If you disagree, you should be able to explain your position plainly; "feels like vibes to me" is not an explanation, it's a feeling.

If you want to argue that there's something invalidating the arguments, by all means do. But it's really tiring to get many variations of "nobody's made the case for it!" or "there's no evidence for it!" or "vibes!".

My position is that there are too many off-ramps between us and the proposed inevitability. And the argument is not symmetric. The null hypothesis is that the world continues to function. The burden of proof is on the authors of the book to show that human destruction is an inevitability as the result of this technology, and they have failed to show that.

This is cited in multiple reviews of the book in reputable publications. The book simply fails to compel belief.

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