[ExI] AI Confirms Plans to Take Over Humanity, Insists It's Probably for the Best

[Mike Dougherty]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 6:05 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Can't we do better than that?
>
> Out of the thousands of leaders we could identify in the last hundred or
> so years, we only identify two who did a couple of isolated things that
> they are remembered for (which says nothing about their average
> performance) that leads us to think favourably of them?
>
> What about Zelenskyii?
>
> Any others?
>
> Do you think we could get the count up to ten?
>
> I think I'm making my point. The vast majority of human leaders have been
> Bad, and only restrained in their destructiveness by things like geography
> and opposing, equally bad leaders of other countries.
>
> It seems we can't make a good case for humans remaining in control of the
> world. At least in terms of human well-being (and probably a hundred other
> things too).
>

I got your point.  I think the bias is not only that humans are bad, or
that power corrupts. We disproportionately remember bad events.  We seem to
hold trauma.  I'm not sure sure we have a word that succinctly means the
opposite of trauma.  If i ask you to list 10 criticisms of modern life, i
expect it would be an easy task. If i ask you to make a list of 10
appreciations, i expect most would need 2-3x as much time to consider
compared to criticisms.  (Possibly not for spike, he's generally quick to
profess gratitude for all that we have)

I also question the premise "humans are in control of the world."  That
feels like extreme hubris.  If the state of earth is 'under control' then
we must intend and will for this to be as it is.  I suggest the world is an
imminent landslide, avalanche, or quake - we convince ourselves that we are
safe today because we're mostly incapable of doing much more than that to
actually mitigate disasters.  Wildfires happen because prevention is
complex. Climate change is runaway because undoing the damage from 200
years of progress cannot be accomplished in 2 years (the attention span of
investors) Now we add fast takeoff AI to the threats to our status quo.  If
humans effectively controlled anything in this world,  we'd have less cause
to fear AI - but it is precisely that we don't control that we fear

On that point, I wonder if EP lens might apply to our relationship with AI
as xenophobic other competing for resources? hmm.
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