[ExI] Holy cow!

[Adrian Tymes]

On Wed, Apr 8, 2026 at 4:54 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> For the very first time a vast non-human intelligence has the power to devastate the world's economy and plunge civilization into chaos. And you say it's just hype,  nothing special, just an incremental improvement!

One might debate whether previous examples were "vast" or truly
"intelligence" ("Is this particular AI actually 'intelligent'?" being
a perennial question), but I do recall quite a few previous automated
bug-finding efforts, some of which were spoken of in similar terms at
the time - however much we might call that silly in hindsight.

Remember how Y2K was spoken of in late 1999?  Not how it turned out,
but how people were talking about what might happen just before it
turned into a big nothingburger.  (Granted, that was probably
partially because of the intense fixing effort that was applied.)
Quite a few of the Y2K bugs were found through automated processes -
spoken of at the time as the latest in artificial intelligence.

And that's just the most well known historical example.  Civilization
has run much closer to failure states than you give it credit for, and
has since before you or I were born.  You get scared when you finally
notice.

I will grant that I may have had more reason than most to notice,
given my line of work.  But it does give perspective on what most
people notice and remember - which is what you asked about, not which
one is actually more important.

Most people can process the thought of bombs, and how war in one part
of the world can cause oil prices to spike which is why they have to
pay more for gas.  "Devastate the world's economy and plunge
civilization into chaos", put as such, is imprecise enough wording*
that most people shunt it off to "obvious fantasy" or "I wouldn't be
measurably affected" no matter what evidence you put up, especially
when it's merely something that could happen but steps are being taken
to make sure it won't - as opposed to, again, people are paying more
for gas.

* For example: "Okay, so...what, it would devalue the dollar?  Make it
so a dollar's worth a penny?  But you said the world's economy, so if
it did the same to all other currencies and things of worth, the
dollar's value as expressed in anything else - other currencies,
bread, whatever - would...be the same?  So, nothing would happen?"