When people worry about AI, they typically worry about three things: 1) Job loss, 2) Misinformation, and 3) The possibility that superintelligence might unleash a mechanized hell that will be like Terminator 2 in terms of violence and like Star Wars: Attack of the Clones in terms of how much it will suck. I have no deep thoughts on scenario #3, though my position on humans being crushed under the metal heel of robot overlords remains: con.
I feel that the first two concerns are a bit overblown in our dialogue. Two-and-a-half years ago, I said that I think AI will take over non-creative tasks, but that it wasn’t yet creative and maybe never would be. I still feel that way; in my experience, AI is awful at creative tasks, such as writing my blog so that I can realize my dream of playing video games while lying motionless in a puddle of my own drool. But I recently had occasion to rethink my position, because a highly intelligent human source that excels at creative tasks has a different opinion.
Kurzegesagt is a YouTube channel that makes 10-minute videos for people who want to stimulate their minds with galaxy-brain questions like “What is life?” and “Are we alone in the universe?” but who want to do so in less than half the run time of an episode of The Golden Girls. I enjoy Kurzegesagt; as YouTube content goes, I rank their videos just behind hilarious cats and Big Lebowski clips that I’ve seen a hundred times. Which is high praise.