> I thought everyone in AI, and most HN readers, had seen "Colossus - The Forbin Project" by now.

You assume anyone in AI reads or watches anything beyond some current pop-culture, and even then it's unlikely. You can see it in the way they talk, or approach problems, or in their opinions.

Perhaps some of us collectively need to do that...for pretty much the opposite reasons you claim.

The crises you mention are way down the road, if they occur at all. If warming does become problematic, we'll have to geoengineer our way out of it, as according to the alarmists we've already passed a critical level of CO2 concentration. There's no end in sight to further CO2 emission, either. The good news is that the global warming alarmism is likely overblown, and even if not geoengineering and other mitigations will provide a workable solution.

The one crisis that will absolutely not occur due to "climate change" is "power shortages". Fission power is effectively unlimited, and so is fusion power once it comes online. Solar is also there for the long haul, though its land usage is prohibitive compared to nuclear sources. (Wind power is a waste of money, time, and materials, but that's another topic.)

The only viable way forward is to advance science and engineering to the point that addressing global warming as needed is feasible - which will also provide myriads of other benefits. The future is bright, and will be multiplanetary soon enough!

Don't you ever wonder why you can't quantify those predictions and what they would look like if you did? They're all things that already occur and have always occurred to some extent, what's the difference?

Are you saying neuromancer and snow crash are the antecedents?

Because they were published in 1984 and 1992 respectively

Maybe I didn’t understand

Sci-fi films from the 70s and 80s were not recreating stories from the 80s and 90s.

Before 2006 everyone thought the end of the world would be the Terminator. After everyone thought it would be Idiocracy.

Turns out it is both at the same time.

Check out The China Syndrome. I went on a never-seen-before 70s binge a while back and watch Colossus, Parallax, China Syndrome and Three Days of the Condor. Odd mix, but good.

We cannot be living in Idiocracy. In the movie, President Camacho actually cared about solving the problems facing his citizens, finding the smartest person on the planet and putting him to work to fix them. It's also worth noting that nearly all of said problems were the result of ignorance rather than malice.

In reality, Trump is deliberately exacerbating existing problems and creating new ones, perhaps as a smokescreen for all he's doing to enrich himself and his buddies at the expense of the rest of us.

Won't be long before a data center is officially named "Torment Nexus"

Unless something has changed recently, I believe they are still using gas turbines to power it

LLMs are distilled bias. Its not like they're a classical AI being of pure logic.

I think it could work quite well if you don't get over ambitious with it. Claude with a publicly available prompt to follow a sensible publicly available and voted on might do better than the orange wonder.

Oh the Hitchhikers guide is also a good movie. 42

Socialism would work under an agi.

It’s fascinating to watch the depth of True Belief increase as the obvious signs of impending financial doom increase as well. Reminds me of Festinger’s work with the comet cult, although I suppose the “getting paid to believe” aspect is stronger here.

Mentally challenged luddites like you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the directions printed on the heel.

I'm not sure how one can be cognizant of world events and think we've put religion behind us.

I wouldn't say we were freed from religion. For many people we just became potent demi-gods within the pantheon.

Maybe this is where freeing oneself from God leads. The question then would be - are you better off?

Not quite. AI is the new "god" for many. All seeing. All knowing. Just the other day I said something that contradicted Claude. Then I heard, "but Claude told me..." Then I sent a screenshot of the actual thing we were talking about.

We haven't even come close to freeing ourselves from God or religion, the biggest religious fanatics are running the world now through US government capture.

Peter Thiel comes to mind.

My only gripe with Idiocracy is the idea that stupid people make stupid children. I know plenty of smart people who have come from brain dead parents.

It certainly may be true, but I would ask, is a bit higher survival chance worth the costs? If humanity is so incapable of self governance and individual judgement and freedoms, should survival even be the goal? I would fight and die over certain principles and human rights and ideals, should humanity in general do the same thing, even to the ultimate end?

Unless another intellegence can provide a literal utopia, I will always be pro-human judgement and control. If we kill ourselves from it then so be it, we will have earned it.

Maybe we do need some benevolent technocratic dictator… somebody very wise…

Controversial implies something other than near universal revulsion at the notion. What you’re experiencing is the consequence of being in a very small, very intense bubble that believes increasingly unhinged things because doing so correlates with a profit.

I wouldn’t dignify the notion of a stochastic dictator with the title of controversy anymore than I would any other religious or personal delusion.