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With the release OpenAI’s Chat GPT-5, the world is one step closer to unleashing a general-purpose superintelligence that can cognitively outperform each of us by a wide margin. As this day nears, I am increasingly worried that we are woefully unprepared for the shockwaves this will send through society — and it’s probably not for the reasons you expect.
Try this little experiment: Ask anyone you know if they are concerned about AI, and they will likely share a variety of fears, from massive disruptions in the job market and the reality-bending impacts of deepfakes, to the unprecedented power being concentrated in a handful of large AI companies. In other words, most people have never honestly imagined what their life will really feel like the day after superintelligence becomes widely available.
Why superintelligence could demoralize us
As context, artificial superintelligence (ASI) refers to systems that can outthink humans on most fronts, from planning and reasoning to problem-solving, strategic thinking and raw creativity. These systems will solve complex problems in a fraction of a second that might take the smartest human experts days, weeks or even years to work through. This terrifies me, and it’s not because of the doomsday scenarios that dominate our public discourse.
No, I am worried about the opposite risks — the dangers that could emerge in the best-case scenarios where superintelligence is helpful and benevolent. Such an ASI will have many positive impacts on society, but it could also be deeply demoralizing to our core identity as humans. After all, the world will feel different when each of us knows that a smarter, faster, more creative intelligence is available on our mobile devices than between our own ears.
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