agi-3
Explanation
This comic takes place at a physics department where theoreticians rally against letting an advanced AI solve all of physics. A speaker argues they must "stand together" to prevent AI from completing their field, because if a final theory is found that is "fundamentally elegant and simple," physicists would have nothing left to do -- no more papers to publish, no career prospects.
The speaker tries to rally the crowd: "Do you want to live in a world where physics is no longer interesting and we are out of a job?" The crowd shouts "No! Never!" But when asked if they'll resist the AI, the crowd immediately betrays the cause and asks the AI practical questions like "How do we make fire?" -- reverting to the most basic, caveman-level curiosity. The final panel has the AI answering "We can neglect friction, right?" -- a classic physics-simplification joke.
The humor works on several levels. It satirizes academics' fear that AI will make their expertise obsolete, shows how quickly principled resistance crumbles in the face of useful technology, and ends with a physics in-joke about the discipline's love of simplifying assumptions (neglecting friction, assuming spherical cows, etc.). The comic suggests that even physicists who swear to resist AI would immediately start using it for the most trivial questions.