Max Read

ALT But "x-risk" is not the only kind of "existential" risk about which AI enthusiasts and their converts tend to worry. This recent Ezra Klein column, written in the wake of OpenAI's release of hundreds of mathematical proofs, is a nice articulation of something I've come to think of as "n-risk," for "ennui risk" (with the mutual understanding that it's not pronunciation-accurate so don't bother making a nitpicky little comment about it): fear of the loss of comprehension, control, and meaning in the face of impossibly sophisticated godlike machines poses.

ALT I bring up this distinction at length because I think there are similarly two kinds of n-risk bundled into the idea, such as it's being articulated out there in the wilds of discourse. The first is, again direct n-risk: The idea that the mere knowledge that a system is out there able to outperform human beings in any domain is enough to sap us of confidence, purpose, spirit, and meaning. The second, naturally, is indirect n-risk: The risk that the insertion of AI as an intermediating layer in a set of systems and processes already designed to enervate, annoy, humiliate, degrade, and alienate us will only accelerate our own misery. What frightens about AI in this case isn't its capabilities themselves so much as the fear that those capabilities will only ever be used to justify austerity, unemployment, anti-intellectualism, and other means of destabilization and disempowerment. Here you might ask: Is the cause of melancholy and despair on the part of some mathematicians simply the know