History has shown that an alien invasion can only happen because of the internal competition and in-fighting of the natives. Colonial empires proved it only a few centuries back. The invading alien powers are fuelled by the inviting natives.

AI (and computing technology in general) is an alien as it defies all wordly norms. It can have exact identical copies, can replicate, can exist everywhere, communicate across huge distance without time lapse, do huge work without time lapse, has no physical mass of it's own,, no respect for time, distance, mass and thinking work, not a living thing but can think.... Just the perfect alien creature qualities.

Why are they allowed to invade Earth? The business goals, of course. To get a temporary edge over the competitors, until they acquire the same. But once everyone has the same Ai, there is no going back. Ai has established itself through the weak channels that are filled with greed, that can bribed by giving toys (business edge), in return to the keys to the dominance of human race.

uhg this entire way of treating AI like a magical alien invasion is the problem, it just a statistical model, text-in, text-out (and it humans that feed the input and act on the output). Its not some alien invasion that can't be stopped, its just another technology that we as humans need to figure out how we want to use. Seriously people need to stop trying to anthropomorphize AI, because doing so is one of the biggest hurdles to practical/common-sense AI adoption IMO.

> internal competition and in-fighting of the natives.

What about diseases which killed up to 95% of the population? I think you are basically correct, except for the historical analogy.

I get the point of your metaphor but its missing the forest for the trees

>History has shown that an alien invasion can only happen because of the internal competition and in-fighting of the natives.

Not true. Overwhelming technological advantage also works. As Hilaire Belloc put it:

  Whatever happens, we have got
  The Maxim gun, and they have not.

>The invading alien powers are fuelled by the inviting natives.

And the massive amounts of people (software engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc) currently being paid as contractors to help train the next AI models. They're essentially the inviting natives who are being paid in trifles to tell them the secret ways of the natives farther inland. Sucking out all of the tribal knowledge of the industry like a vacuum.

This would imply that evolution, which is also an arms race that disrupts and obsoletes the status quo, is due to some “weakness”.

AI doesn’t actually come from the outside.

The fact it’s economics have high winner-take-a-lot aspects, doesn’t mean you can eliminate the current winners and end up anywhere different, because it’s actually a natural decentralized progression of improving efficiency.

So that framing makes no sense.

However, the thesis for the potential for violence is sound. I don’t see a way out of that, given unending disruption, with no coordinated responsible response.

I do not think is this essay is hype.

This moment requires great leadership and competence, but that is not what is getting elected.

The last two decades patience with massive businesses scaling up profitable conflicts of interest, and centralizing gatekeeper and dependency powers, that offer no recourse to any individuals they mistreat, strongly suggest we are incapable of dealing with AI fallout. Which will only accelerate and add to those trends.

It reads like someone discovered analogies and decided they’re a substitute for thinking.

The entire argument lives and dies on one move: calling AI an “alien.” And it’s not even consistent. It starts with “alien” as in foreign invader, then quietly upgrades it to “space alien,” and from that point on everything just inherits whatever sci fi trait sounds dramatic. That’s not reasoning, that’s a word doing a costume change and dragging the argument along with it.

And honestly, the quality of comments on HN feels like it’s been tracking the broader decline in cognitive performance. The long running Flynn Effect has stalled or reversed in parts of the US. Some datasets show small but real drops in IQ related measures over the past decade. You read threads like this and it’s hard not to feel like you’re watching that play out in real time.

> Ai has established itself through the weak channels that are filled with greed,

That explains the prolific AI use as incompetent agencies like the DoJ, DOGE, and others under the current administration