Snack Club "Book" Club - A Discussion on AI Ethics
Downstream Discussion Club
A discussion group for thinking about what AI means to society and what it’s doing to the world it's been released into - to the way we work, learn, connect, and the texture of everyday life.
SESSION 5 (October) — The “AI Apocalypse”
After a month of heightened AI doom talk, sparked by researcher Jacob Coxon's warning that the people building AI "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade," we'll use this session to step back from the headlines and take stock. Rather than discussing technicalities or probabilities, we'll look more at what doom talk itself does: share our perspectives, unpack who gets to name the risk and what means, and how apocalyptic framing sharpens our attention or distracts it. We'll also ask what it means to live alongside a forecast like this and how it might permeate into our everyday.
Context:
AI researchers back an extinction warning as the Pentagon rejects it — The Next Web
Your AI doomsday questions answered: could AI technology really end humanity? — The Guardian
Optional: AI 2027 — Daniel Kokotajlo et al. (a detailed future scenario from a former OpenAI researcher and collaborators)
Optional: Who should we believe on the AI apocalypse? — The Irish Times
Perspectives:The AI Apocalypse Bracket: Just How Doomed Are We, Really? — Brian Phillips, The Ringer
Optional: Comment section on How has internalising a post-AGI world affected your current life? — LessWrong (read the comments)
Optional: The Track Record on Tech Doom Is Not Impressive — Advisor Analyst, on Deutsche Bank Research
Optional: We Must Pace the Frontier — Dario Amodei
Please note this event is only open to AI Snack Club paying members. To join, sign-up here: aisnackclub.com