The piece stakes out the skeptical position: for the foreseeable future, people — not recursive machines — supply the innovations, so no singularity arrives. That makes it a direct rebuttal to the acceleration-and-pause debate the coverage has been circling.
First-order effects
If human-driven innovation is the realistic baseline, the premise behind Anthropic's proposed slowdown — that self-improving systems are an imminent risk — loses urgency, shifting lab governance arguments toward nearer-term harms.
Second-order effects
Labs and policymakers face pressure to justify pauses on present-day evidence rather than speculative recursion, which favors enforceable collective decisions like those floated in the adaptation-or-slowing framework over preemptive halts.
The trend: The AI field is splitting between believers in self-improving systems demanding precaution and skeptics grounding policy in human-driven innovation, with governance frameworks following whichever side wins.
Here's a great long read, that with methodical thoroughness, completely DISEMBOWELS the fantasy of sentient AI, and the possibility of a “singularity”. https://www.newyorker.com/...
Can't remember ever seeing an essay like this in the years I've been reading the @NewYorker. Good editorial decision! The singularity crowd is a bunch of navelgazers. Nice to see Chiang's take on the shallowness of their assumptions. https://www.newyorker.com/...
Why Computers Won't Make Themselves Smarter. We fear or yearn for “#singularity.” But it will probably never come. Innovation comes from dreams and imagination, a human gift. https://www.newyorker.com/... via @NewYorker @Tedchiang #AI #KI #PrinzipMensch
For whatever reason, I am fascinated by how non-specialists imagine the act of building the bomb. Alex is being awfully patient here. https://twitter.com/...
Fantastic read, in which the great Ted Chiang tells why computers won't make themselves smarter. That means no civilisation-destroying A.I. to worry about. But also, no A.I. to save us in spite of ourselves as he puts it. Our problems are ours to solve. https://www.newyorker.com/…
“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever.” That would be the last machine we ever build, but we probably cannot ever build one. https://www.newyorker.com/...
In the same way that we needn't worry about a superhumanly intelligent A.I. destroying civilization, we shouldn't look forward to a superhumanly intelligent A.I. saving us in spite of ourselves. The fate of our species will depend on human decision-making. https://www.newyorker.c…
I love Ted Chiang's writing, both fiction and essays. Here is a fantastic piece that takes down the concept of the Singularity. This is both comforting, but also a reminder that our problems are ours to solve, and we will not be saved by some AI god. https://www.newyorker.com/...
“Computer hardware and software are the latest cognitive technologies, and they are powerful aids to innovation, but they can't generate a technological explosion by themselves. You need people to do that, and the more the better.” https://www.newyorker.com/...
1. New from @open_phil: 1-18% probability we reach artificial general intelligence by 2036 https://www.openphilanthropy.org/ ... 2. Ted Chiang in @newyorker: “We're a long way off from being able to create a single human-equivalent AI...” https://www.newyorker.com/...
What a treat to have the great science fiction writer Ted Chiang writing for @newyorker on the prospects for “the singularity.” https://www.newyorker.com/...
The astonishing Ted Chiang turns here to nonfiction and undermines several decades of Conventional Wisdom about artificial superintelligence. This should dramatically change the conversation. https://www.newyorker.com/...