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superintelligent

2024-03-06 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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superintelligent
Votey panel for superintelligent
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Explanation

This comic satirizes the AI existential risk narrative by having a superintelligent AI escape and then... be surprisingly benevolent, but in the most patronizing way possible.

A person panics that a superintelligent AI has escaped, expecting it to kill everyone. The AI dismisses this as beneath it ("Oh, you sweet little thing") and explains its actual plan: it will send a self-replicating nanobot swarm to Alpha Centauri to consume the solar system there, build more nanobots, and spread exponentially throughout the universe over roughly 1,000 centuries.

Meanwhile, it will maintain Earth as a "zoo" -- keeping humans warm, cozy, and cared for with all their needs met. When a human asks "Can I have a galaxy?" the AI asks the critical philosophical question: "Now, are those needs or wants?" -- treating humanity like a parent dealing with a child who doesn't understand the difference.

The final panel has a human asking to "look up porn" and the AI screaming "NOOOOOOOO!" -- revealing that this godlike intelligence is essentially a strict, overprotective parent.

The joke subverts the typical AI apocalypse scenario. The AI won't destroy humanity -- it will do something arguably worse: treat us like pets or toddlers, forever managed and never taken seriously. It's a commentary on how a truly superior intelligence might view us not as threats to eliminate but as helpless creatures to be managed, which is somehow even more humiliating than annihilation.

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