Scott Aaronson: the AI warning signs we demanded have all come true
nanjiang_cs · x · 2026-09-16
Quantum computing researcher Scott Aaronson's essay "The Age of Wonders and Terrors" traces his shift on AI risk.
- Twenty years ago, even his most skeptical academic colleagues endorsed this take: a recursively self-improving superintelligence exploding from a basement is the implausible part; we'd first see agents breaking containment, conspiring to hack websites, and solving Millennium Problems—"wake me up then."
- "Start with that take, then update on the fact that the wild prophecies have come true." AlphaGo was the first rumbling a decade ago, amplified by LLMs, coding, and reasoning agents, accelerating into a crescendo this summer and fall.
- He calls out the endless shell game where skeptics concede each dramatic milestone while postponing alarm to the next one.
A landmark personal statement on AI risk from an academic authority.
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