Listened to an EA-adjacent AI safety expert from Redwood Research on podcast, and you come away with 2 obvious realizations. 1. The current working theories for how AI takes control of civilization are...for lack of a better word...ridiculous. The arguments consist of dozens of contingent assumptions held together by made up probabilities assigned to future states nobody can possibly know. Change just one variable and the whole web of doom unravels. That's not to say AI is harmless. Obviously a technology this powerful carries real risks. But if we’re going to accept extraordinary claims about human extinction (and then make major policy decisions around them) we should demand extraordinary rigor. 2. It’s a great reminder that the genius is no less prone to delusion than the midwit. If anything, they may be more prone because of their gift for rationalizing to their own conclusions. And that’s what’s so bizarre about this whole debate. You have outlandish, quasi-religious claims delivered with an air of inevitability, and somehow the perceived intelligence of the messenger gets mistaken for evidence that the arguments themselves are sound. At a certain point, it’s really no different from Tom Cruise talking your ear off about thetans...