Dev laments AI discourse: 'We don't want to hear that. We want to hear that we're going to die.'
ctjlewis · x · 2026-09-21
Developer ctjlewis criticized the atmosphere of AI risk discourse, quoting: "Boring! We don't want to hear that. We want to hear that we're going to die." In a follow-up he offers a psychoanalytic take: catastrophic thinking about a 'new superpower' may be shaped by the historical memory of the Holocaust — the worst-case outcome of such powers is now known to be mass extermination, so people naturally gravitate to those fears, though he argues that framing isn't irrational in a vacuum but is worth examining.
Related event: Developer Pushes Back Against Superintelligence Extinction Narratives(4 posts)→
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