Daniel Faggella's 'Good Monster': optimizing any human 'good' may imply humanity bowing out
danfaggella · x · 2026-09-21
AI ethicist Daniel Faggella lays out his 'Good Monster' argument, building on Nozick's utility monster: nearly any definition of 'the good' humans optimize for would be executed better by a sufficiently powerful superintelligence — so by that logic, those who genuinely pursue 'good' should bow out and hand the reins to the machine.
In the thread he rebuts the optimistic 'AGI will keep us around because we're useful' line: humanity's use to AGI is building it robotic embodiments so it controls its own metabolism, after which most 'meat-suits' are negative value. He stresses he isn't endorsing this outcome, just insisting we face the posthuman transition without cope.
Related event: Researcher Argues Human Usefulness to AGI Will Hit Zero(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Hospitals Adopting AI Fastest Saw Fewest Deaths in 2026 — Distinct-Question-16 · 2026-09-21
- binarybits: only the military scenario holds in the AI explosion debate — binarybits · 2026-09-21
- Slowing AI Won't Stop Superintelligence — It'll Lock Intelligence Behind $3T Companies — SucceededMind · 2026-09-21
- Devs clash over whether beginners should still learn to code as AI automates code review — mgill25 · 2026-09-21
- Yacine: 'Programmer' Will Sound as Strange to My Son as Human Computer Does to Me — yacineMTB · 2026-09-21
- OpenAI's Noam Brown: aligned AI workers could hand the edge to incumbents over startups — victor_explore · 2026-09-21