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EPISODE · Sep 12, 2026 · 17 MIN

"Some ways AI could kill us all" by Ruby

from LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

I don't think this is how it will actually play out. If you play a chess grandmaster, you can predict that they will beat you even if you can't predict how. I chose these examples because I don't think they require much imagination or accepting exotic assumptions. It is important to note that if chimpanzees were to guess how humans would decimate them, they would get it wrong. Chimpanzees would not imagine guns. They would not foresee poison gas. They would not conceive of chemical castration. They would not imagine humans going around and intentionally infecting them with AIDS. They have no concept of these things; they would not see it coming. Perhaps they might guess we'd be really good at throwing rocks. Amazingly good. Well, technically, that's what guns do: throw "rocks" really really well. So how will superintelligent AI actually wipe us all out? Probably in a way I couldn't conceive of. Nonetheless, it's not hard to see how deadly they could be with what we already know about. Method 1: engineer the deadliest and most contagious virus ever seen Coronavirus-19, aka COVID, looms large in the memory of living adults today. It started in December [...] --- Outline: (01:14) Method 1: engineer the deadliest and most contagious virus ever seen [... 8 more sections] --- First published: September 11th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LAPa2jxoq3n63GzTr/some-ways-ai-could-kill-us-all --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Sep 12, 2026

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I don't think this is how it will actually play out. If you play a chess grandmaster, you can predict that they will beat you even if you can't predict how. I chose these examples because I don't think they require much imagination or accepting exotic assumptions. It is important to note that if chimpanzees were to guess how humans would decimate them, they would get it wrong. Chimpanzees would not imagine guns. They would not foresee poison gas. They would not conceive of chemical castra...

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