Once upon a time, a scientist was driving fast in a car full of weaponized superebola

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.

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