My answer to speculation that AI is the Fermi Filter is usually “Nah”, because if AI actually destroys us it’ll be in order to further grander aims, and the AI will thereby take over for us in colonizing our light cone. (I don’t think current LLM tech is capable of that, though I could be wrong.) Not that this is a happy ending for us, but if that is what happens to technical civs, then what we would expect to see is AIs building Kardashev artifacts, and we don’t.
But this is sort of different. If we are capable of being subdued not as an instrumental goal of an AGI or ASI, but simply because we are too stupid not to be seduced by software that isn’t even aware of what it’s doing…well, then yeah, arguably it could be the Fermi Filter.
That requires the assumption that every technical civ out there has the same weakness. I don’t know how to guess about that. The range of animal psychologies on Earth makes it seem unlikely, but maybe mankind’s self-domesticating almost-herd-animal nature is part of what’s necessary to develop things like trade and markets and, eventually, a technical civ, and maybe that’s also the One Neat Trick that makes seducing us possible.
It does require some long-term fine-tuning, though. If we are so thoroughly seduced that our technical civ collapses, so will the AIs that have seduced us, and what will be left are humans who do not need a technical civ to reproduce, until they manage to build a new technical civ, etc. If any of these is smart enough to avoid seduction, then it stops being a Fermi Filter.
The Great Cosmological Filter that addresses the Fermi Paradox?
My answer to speculation that AI is the Fermi Filter is usually “Nah”, because if AI actually destroys us it’ll be in order to further grander aims, and the AI will thereby take over for us in colonizing our light cone. (I don’t think current LLM tech is capable of that, though I could be wrong.) Not that this is a happy ending for us, but if that is what happens to technical civs, then what we would expect to see is AIs building Kardashev artifacts, and we don’t.
But this is sort of different. If we are capable of being subdued not as an instrumental goal of an AGI or ASI, but simply because we are too stupid not to be seduced by software that isn’t even aware of what it’s doing…well, then yeah, arguably it could be the Fermi Filter.
That requires the assumption that every technical civ out there has the same weakness. I don’t know how to guess about that. The range of animal psychologies on Earth makes it seem unlikely, but maybe mankind’s self-domesticating almost-herd-animal nature is part of what’s necessary to develop things like trade and markets and, eventually, a technical civ, and maybe that’s also the One Neat Trick that makes seducing us possible.
It does require some long-term fine-tuning, though. If we are so thoroughly seduced that our technical civ collapses, so will the AIs that have seduced us, and what will be left are humans who do not need a technical civ to reproduce, until they manage to build a new technical civ, etc. If any of these is smart enough to avoid seduction, then it stops being a Fermi Filter.
Racist propaganda movies as a service.
https://x.com/charliebcurran/status/2050667987359969610
Slightly OT, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die was a strange but good movie relating to the perils of AI.
It is a fun movie with a good pace. It will be a movie that people watch over the coming years, perhaps a cult classic.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1341338/