If you care about AI safety and also like reading novels, I highly recommend Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle”.

It’s “Don’t Look Up”, but from the 60s

[Spoilers]

A scientist invents ice-nine, a substance which could kill all life on the planet.

If you ever once make a mistake with ice-nine, it will kill everybody.

It was invented because it might provide this mundane practical use (driving in the mud) and because the scientist was curious.

Everybody who hears about ice-nine is furious. “Why would you invent something that could kill everybody?!”

A mistake is made.

Everybody dies.

It’s also actually a pretty funny book, despite its dark topic.

So Don’t Look Up, but from the 60s.

Once upon a time, a scientist was driving fast

In a car full of weaponized superebola.

It was raining heavily so he couldn’t see clearly where he was going.

His passenger said calmly, “Quick question: what the fuck?”

“Don’t worry,” said the scientist.  “Since I can’t see clearly, we don’t know we’re going to hit anything and accidentally release a virus that kills all humans.”

As he said this, they hit a tree, released the virus, and everybody died slow horrible deaths.

The End

The moral of the story is that if there’s more uncertainty, you should go slower and more cautiously.

Sometimes people say that we can’t know if creating a digital species (AI) is going to harm us. Predicting the future is hard, therefore we should go as fast as possible.

And I agree - there is a ton of uncertainty around what will happen.

It could be one of the best inventions we ever make.

It could also be the worst, and make nuclear weapons look like benign little trinkets.

And because it’s hard to predict, we should move more slowly and carefully.

And anybody who's confident it will go well or go poorly is overconfident. Things are too uncertain to go full speed ahead. 

Don't move fast and break things if the "things" in question could be all life on earth.

​While most people might come home from work complaining of a malfunctioning printer or an incompetent boss, my dad mentions that he got chased by a grizzly bear or was threatened with guns by angry logals.

Notice I say mentioned and not complained, for he doesn’t even seem to mind.

My dad can best be described as a mountain goat, or perhaps a mountain man. It’s not the difference between a city mouse and a country mouse. The country is far too tame for him. He lives in and belongs to the wilderness.

Maybe though I shouldn’t call him a mountain man but rather a Mr Magoo of the forest. He does seem to regularly get into the most dangerous situations and survive unscathed and unbothered despite, as far as I can tell, minimal precautions. 

He brings bear spray into the woods, but lives off of canned sardines and mussels, practically asking the bears to come find him. 

I try not to victim blame, but if he gets eaten by a bear, I mean - sardines! 

He was asking for it.

He hasn’t been eaten by a bear. (Yet.) He has been chased by a few though. Most bears are fine. 

The stereotype that Canadians are always having to worry about bears is just that: a stereotype. 

I mean, sure, my recurring nightmares are about bears. And sure, kids grow up knowing bear safety. And maybe if you ask a Canadian, most will know at least one person with a bear scare. 

But really! 

It’s fine.

Unless you’re my dad. Then you’ll hear of him being chased by a male grizzly bear, bigger than a car,  while on a dirt bike. 

He’ll tell of a black bear coming to camp that he hit right on the nose with a flare gun. 

Those are supposed to work. 

The bear apparently didn’t know that, sneezed, and kept coming. 

My dad then rolled a boulder down a hill, scaring the bear away in a scene that must have been repeated for eons before agriculture. 

My dad in a nutshell - a man in the stone age, looking for more stones.

For that is what he does. He looks for gold in them’ thar’ hills. 

Any other minerals too for that matter. He’s a geologist, going around the world and trying to discover the next big deposit that will make us all rich. I have grown up with this refrain. Hasn’t happened yet, but the lure of being independently wealthy off of mining royalties certainly does have its appeal. 

In the meantime though, the job pays well enough and he gets paid to travel to all sorts of exotic locales.

Don’t be too envious though, because he goes to the most dangerous and wild places. 

He doesn’t go to the tourist resorts, where things are safe and clean. He doesn’t even go “off the beaten track” that the hip travellers go to. 

He goes where there are no tracks, sometimes literally using a machete to make it through the jungle.

This has its undeniable romance.

To be an explorer in the jungle has a romantic draw to many of us. However, I do believe that if this population was then given the opportunity to go, most would change their mind less than a week in. 

Having worked with my dad in the summers in the (relatively) benign Canadian wilderness, with no poisonous animals, a decently nearby and functioning medical system, a peaceful society, and being an avid outdoorsy person myself, I can attest to the fact that going into the true wilderness is a pain in the fucking ass.

I remember one time my dad asked me what campsite I would like: the one with the bears or the one with the bugs.

I chose bugs since they’re annoying but non-fatal, but by the end of the trip I was doubting my choice. We were dropped in by helicopter on top of a mountain overlooking the nearby ocean. It was majestic. There weren’t any bugs! What a perfect choice.

The helicopter left, to return two weeks later to bring us back. As it left, I could see a wall of black approaching us. 

The wings of the helicopter had been keeping the bugs at bay. 

It was the worst I’ve ever seen (and my dad says it doesn’t even make his top 50). I had to wear a bug net over my face, otherwise I’d breathe a bug or two with each breath. The moment a single inch of skin was revealed they’d divebomb you, leaving red welts. A cloud surrounded us no matter where we walked.

Among my friends, I am generally known as somebody who can swim anywhere, regardless of temperature or water quality. I am nothing compared to my dad though. 

My dad insisted we swim in a pond, so congested with lilypads and duckweed that you couldn’t see any water. It was only four feet deep. I declined. 

He proceeded to strip, be bitten by approximately ten thousand parasites, slip into the four foot deep pond, sinking into the sludge below, his head still being bombarded by insects, stroll around a bit, go through the same process of being eaten alive, then carry on, proclaiming its refreshment.

He says that bug bites are good for your blood.

Sometimes when he’s in the city, my dad will be baffled and mildly outraged by our city-softness. 

We will complain of having to walk multiple blocks from where we parked, or will refuse going on a walk because it’s raining. Sometimes this can seem puzzling to us because it seems like it’s unecessary suffering. 

The more I come to know him and his experiences though, the more I realize that for him, they don’t even register as discomforts because of how intense the other things he’s gone through have been.

But despite often I worry for his safety (don’t get me started about his trip to the Congo!), I am so grateful to call him my dad. 

He’s taught me how to be happy no matter where you are, and helped me develop a cheerful toughness. 

When most people would terrified about taking the risk of leaving university to start a charity, I just think “At least it’s not bears”.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad! ❤️

Once upon a time in 2026, an idiot teenager used the AI, LLAMA 5.2, to create superebola.

As a joke, you see.

The problem was, the joke worked.

And because he had at his fingertips the IQ of an advanced AI but the wisdom of an idiot teenager, the superebola got loose.

Over a billion people died slow, horrific deaths.

And Meta, the creator of the AI, the creator who said that you should treat AI the same wait you treat Google Docs, just shrugged and said “wasn’t our fault. We couldn’t have possibly known that if we shared advanced AI with the entire world with no guardrails that this could have happened.”

The Meta folks responsible who were not killed by superebola were killed by angry mobs.

And then all future AIs were heavily regulated and safety standards were taken fucking seriously and everybody lived happily ever after.

Once upon a time in 2026, an idiot teenager used the AI, LLAMA 5.2, to create superebola.

​As a joke, you see.

The problem was, the joke worked.

And because he had at his fingertips the IQ of an advanced AI but the wisdom of an idiot teenager, the superebola got loose.

Over a billion people died slow, horrific deaths.

And Meta, the creator of the AI, the creator who said that you should treat AI the same wait you treat Google Docs, just shrugged and said “wasn’t our fault. We couldn’t have possibly known that if we shared advanced AI with the entire world with no guardrails that this could have happened.”

The Meta folks responsible who were not killed by superebola were killed by angry mobs.

And then all future AIs were heavily regulated and safety standards were taken fucking seriously and everybody lived happily ever after.

The End