Power Trip
The Deadly Gamble on Super A.I.
With fate of humanity in the balance, even a small risk demands serious action
This is the third installment of “Privatizing the Apocalypse,” a four-part essay to be published throughout October. Read the previous installments here — Part 1: “The 50/50 Murder” and Part 2: “Deterrence — and the Undeterrable”.
The most famous meteorite in prehistory struck Mexico some 66 million years ago. It unleashed the explosive force of 10 billion Hiroshima-scale bombs. Three-fourths of all species perished in the aftermath, including every breed of dinosaur. And this was merely the fifth-worst mass extinction of the past half-billion years. (The worst wiped out 96 percent of all species.)
The universe will continue to lob Yucatan-grade rocks our way. Intriguingly, we might be able to fend one off if we have enough warning. This foresight would be costly, however, and we’re quite unlikely to get smacked until eons after our great-great-great-great-grandchildren are gone. So should we even bother to track this stuff?
Assuming meteorites caused all five big extinctions (though not at all certain, this is a reasonable assumption for a thought experiment), they have turned up roughly once every 100 million years. This means in any given…
