Terence Tao's analogy: AI is a jet engine — safe only inside a system
Afinetheorem · x · 2026-10-06
Terence Tao compares AI to a jet engine: we don't strap jet engines to individuals as jetpacks because it would be unsafe, but put the engine in an airplane surrounded by a whole system and it becomes very safe and powerful — an argument for embedding AI within rigorous systems rather than using it as a free-standing autonomous agent.
More from AGI Musings
- Ben Goertzel: Neural-Symbolic Agentic Loops Could Yield a Near-Term Intelligence Explosion — bengoertzel · 2026-10-06
- Anthropic x Adaptyv Protein Design Contest Issue Challenge 2: Design a Better TNF-α Binder — AllThingsApx · 2026-10-06
- Gary Marcus alarmed: Musk sees humanity as a 'biological bootloader' for superintelligence — GaryMarcus · 2026-10-06
- Carl Feynman lists hypothetical 'cheap ultradestructive' AI weapons, from engineered plagues to U-235 extraction — zetalyrae · 2026-10-06
- The Verge: Brains aren't computers, and AI is junk food for the mind — benjaminjriley · 2026-10-06
- Critic: Big Tech is systematically dismantling institutions for human learning via AI — benjaminjriley · 2026-10-06