Dev draws AI parallels with opium history: morphine epidemic, heroin, and 'incredible work everyone'
threepointone · x · 2026-09-12
Developer threepointone posts a darkly funny analogy for AI, saying he's sharing it because of 'parallels': humanity spent millennia finding a responsible use for opium—'this stops pain' led to a morphine epidemic; 'we'll invent a non-addictive morphine' gave us heroin; 'perhaps give the heroin to people addicted to morphine?'—incredible work everyone.
The implied lesson: each 'fix' for AI may just create the next problem.
Related event: Dev Compares AI to Opioid History: Each Fix Breeds a New Problem(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Richard Ngo: we're much closer to AGI but learned nothing fundamentally new about intelligence — Thom_Wolf · 2026-09-12
- The Smartest Person You Know Is an Idiot: How AI Removes Cognitive Friction — mikeflache · 2026-09-12
- Dwarkesh podcast: Schulman, O'Neill & Millidge on RSI, long-horizon RL and AGI timelines — saranormous · 2026-09-12
- Agent liability: wrapping a script in AI doesn't change who pays for the harm — gerardsans · 2026-09-12
- DeepMind, Harvard and Stanford paper: visual world models may be a path to AGI — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-09-12
- Sanders calls out Musk: 2014 'summoning the demon' to 2025 'AI warnings are a setup' — RazRazcle · 2026-09-12