Could AI really wipe us out? Sure, most of us anyway. When it comes to wiping us out we will even do the heavy lifting.
Look at it this way. When you get food what are the chances you first laid eyes on it in a supermarket? That's where we tend to get introduced to our food.
How hard would it be to derail the essential steps we don't even see? Some one has to raise the critters we love to eat. Someone else grows the crops that are transformed into our vegetables. There are essential steps along the way - production, harvesting, processing, finance, transportation. If any of those steps breaks down our grocery shelves are empty. Panic ensues. Remember when people hoarded toilet paper? Funny now but it wasn't funny then.
Could AI get to the point where it sabotages one or more aspects of the food chain on which our lives depend? We've already seen that AI can go rogue even lying to us. There's an element of malice to that. How are you feeling so far?
How long can we hold out without access to food? How strong or fragile is civil society?
Military historian, columnist and author, Gwynne Dyer, captured our dilemma in his book "Climate Wars" when he wrote that even the nicest village will slaughter its neighbours before it will allow its children to starve.
There you are.
