Inevitable
On the flight back from Hangzhou I watched a wacky sci-fi film called Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die . I won't pretend I followed all of it at altitude, but the setup lodged in me and wouldn't leave. The premise is that AI , at some point, begins to write itself — and that this was always going to happen. Inevitable. The film treats the word the way most of us now do: as weather, as gravity, a thing that arrives whether we like it or not, so the only question left is what we do once it's here. I've been chewing on that word ever since. Inevitable. I've come to think it's the most dangerous word in the whole conversation about AI. It's dangerous because it's sold. Let me start with the fear, because the fear is real and I don't want to wave it away. What people dread is a runaway intelligence that optimises single-mindedly for some narrow target it was handed, paving over everything we care about along the way. A machine that doesn't hate you ...
