If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies

Taken at face value, the premise of the book inspires to abandon all hope for the humanity’s future. It’s not the question of if - but when - the superintelligent AI arrives and takes us apart for our atoms right before consuming the rest of the solar system.

The authors do offer a solution: banning all AI research immediately and locking GPU clusters under a watchful eye of international oversight group. The solution is not viable and the authors themselves seem to agree as Nate Soares stated in a recent interview that he stopped saving for retirement.

The book is not a good read for people prone to anxiety as it makes Terminator feel like a best-case scenario documentary.

But it’s a great manual for sci-fi writers.

At manageable 240 pages it’s an easy pop science book to follow thanks to masterfully weaved play dialogs and allegories to get the point across. There are interesting concepts and ideas, focusing around biology, AI/human comparisons, alien-to-us intelligence and importance and impossibility of AI alignment.

While there are too many absolutes or one-sided arguments (i.e. birth control as a proof that intelligence will always find a workaround to snatch a reward), it serves the goal of explaining the mechanics of technology.