AI Doomsday Scold Dismayed That People Keep Making Plans

The AI doomsday is coming, possibly sooner than expected, and Eliezer Yudkowsky is increasingly concerned that nobody has adjusted his weekend plans accordingly.

Yudkowsky, 47, AI researcher and co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, has spent more than twenty years warning us that sufficiently powerful artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity. He even co-wrote a book called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, eliminating the ambiguity that has hurt so many previous extinction campaigns. Yet, despite his earnest efforts, people continue making dinner reservations.

“I don’t think people understand what ‘everyone dies means,’” Yudkowsky said after learning that a family in Connecticut had booked a Caribbean cruise for February. “There shouldn’t even be a February.”

Evidence of denial is everywhere. Homeowners installing thirty-year roofs. Couples opening college funds for newborns. Costco selling mayonnaise in containers designed to survive several generations.

Even more troubling, millions of people are using the technology Yudkowsky fears to accomplish tasks that scarcely justify civilization surviving long enough to complete them.

Artificial intelligence is writing birthday greetings, removing ex-husbands from vacation photographs, and explaining why somebody’s air fryer smells like electrical fire.

Yudkowsky reportedly became despondent after discovering that an AI chatbot had been asked to compose a polite text declining a neighborhood barbecue.

“This machine may eventually decide whether the human species continues to exist,” he said. “And somebody just asked it how much potato salad to make for twelve people.”

Humanity remains unconvinced that the sky is falling. Reservations for Saturday night are strongly recommended.

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