this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2026
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Ed Zitron’s podcast “Better Offline” recently talked about this. There is a small tech community called the Rationalists who believe AI super intelligence is inevitable and it will either accelerate humanity to new heights or kill off the species. These rationalists are actually a very prominent faction within tech and the AI industry. Apparently the language used within top AI firms is largely about the immense danger posed by AI super intelligence if any other group or company were to achieve it first. This creates an echo chamber that makes the people in the industry kind of lose their mind and misinterpret the capability of LLMs.
Everyone outside that faction recognizes that LLMs are just unreliable cloud software with limited use cases and that there’s no evidence LLMs could actually lead to any kind of intelligence.
Edit: Please, someone stop me from commenting on an AI post next time I’m tempted. I’m so tired of people replying, arguing with opinions I don’t have, based entirely around a hypothetical technology that doesn’t exist yet. LLMs make slop. Thats it. They hacked a company after weeks of 100s of instances being run, using old exploits published online. San Francisco will be underwater from climate change before LLMs can do anything more.
My Problem is: Even if your take on AI is true, we give an unreliable piece of software access to the internet and more and more systems and infrastructure. Even if it is not a malicious AI, it can be so unreliable, it might kill us by incompetence. a Sme can be said about some presidents...
It won't kill us as a species, but its use may lead to disasters that were unintended and didn't need to happen. Much of the regulation in other industries is due to that kind of thing happening. Worse, the companies making them are trying to get regulation to curtail other parties development for economic advantage rather than regulation on use which will steer the entire industry.
As you say, every "scientifically based" industrial innovation / breakthrough has had the potential to cause new kinds of mayhem, and most of them did to some degree or another. Burning rivers and CO2 overload in the atmosphere spring to mind, but industrial "accidents" are part and parcel of industrial activity, always have been.
LLMs are not intelligent. They lack morals, knowledge, and intent. The only remote risk of extermination is if a company with absolute impunity and endless resources told an LLM to hack the nuclear weapons and if knowledge of how to do that was already published online and processed as training data.
LLMs cannot do anything new, they can only regurgitate information thats already been stolen.
Absolutely a huge risk.
extremely naive to not understand existing capabilities of 100s of probings and planning based on probings, and multiple strategies, in a swarm working towards a goal.
Still to your first point, the organizations with the budget and impunity, seeking the most powerful tools, are then the ones who will use them for evil, at expense of others, power maximization.
Or if the military put an LLM in charge of nuclear weapons. But surely nobody would be stupid enough to do that!
"And that's why today I'm signing into law the Trump Nuclear Act. Some say it's the greatest law of all time. Very smart people, even smarter AI. Elon tells me this will save billions, and I'm going to increase my dividend, let's call it the 'Nucular Peace Dividend' to honor Bush, I don't remember which one used to say 'Nucular', but I always liked that guy, and it made me think up how to say Chayyyyna.
CNN get out!"
That is simply counter-factual. LLMs can absolutely do things that have not been published before, and they can access knowledge that is not in their training data through RAG. Intelligence is debatable, but reasoning models can reliably imitate "thinking" to a degree, and recursive self-improvement might lead to an autonomous advancement of intelligence. That LLMs allegedly "only regurgitate information" is simply wrong.
You're confusing morals, knowledge, intent, and intelligence with capability. An atomic bomb has no will of its own either.
idk, every atom bomb I've met has one purpose.....
An atom bomb has no will of its own either.
Same can be said of Homer Simpson manning the console at a nuclear power plant.
AI is a tool, irresponsible use of a tool is... irresponsible. Just like people puttting "not-self-driving" cars into "supervised driving assistance mode" and taking a nap at the wheel at 80mph.
Aren't they called TESCREALists or something? It's like a mish-mash of pop culture and pseudo intellectual BS
@FRYD @Return_of_Chippy there are also some exelent behind the bastarda aboit them too
@FRYD @Return_of_Chippy i love that the logic and reason guys’ next evolution is even less tethered to either
Arguably those are two ways of describing the same event.
A photocell that turns on a streetlamp after sundown, or when a dark cloud passes over the sun, is a kind of intelligence.
Got it. So plants are intelligent.
You're starting to catch on...