My sense is that most people aren’t concerned about Skynet for the same reason that they’re not concerned about robots, zombies, pirates, faeries, aliens, dragons, and ninjas. (Homework: which of those are things to worry about, and why/why not?)
Also, this article could do without the rant against environmentalism and your roommate. Examples are useful to understanding one’s main point, but this article seems to be overwhelmed by its sole example.
It often seems to be the case that some real-world possibility gets reflected in some fictional trope with somewhat different properties, and then when the fictional trope gets more famous you can no longer talk about the real-world possibility because people will assume you must be a stupid fanperson mistaking the fictional trope for something real. Very annoying.
Also, most people haven’t seen any of the Terminator movies or TV series. And most people have never thought about the possibility of recursively self-improving AI. But these might be in a sense only trivially true.
My sense is that most people aren’t concerned about Skynet for the same reason that they’re not concerned about robots, zombies, pirates, faeries, aliens, dragons, and ninjas. (Homework: which of those are things to worry about, and why/why not?)
Also, this article could do without the rant against environmentalism and your roommate. Examples are useful to understanding one’s main point, but this article seems to be overwhelmed by its sole example.
It often seems to be the case that some real-world possibility gets reflected in some fictional trope with somewhat different properties, and then when the fictional trope gets more famous you can no longer talk about the real-world possibility because people will assume you must be a stupid fanperson mistaking the fictional trope for something real. Very annoying.
Also, most people haven’t seen any of the Terminator movies or TV series. And most people have never thought about the possibility of recursively self-improving AI. But these might be in a sense only trivially true.
Thanks, Thom, I’ve edited my article to take into account this critique