No. Superintelligent AI is a very unusual case.

We publicly champion technologies such as nuclear energy, cryonics, human intelligence augmentation, and human challenge trials for medical testing.

More than that, we’re willing to say that when a mad invention risks only the lives of voluntary customers who understand all the relevant dangers, it’s the business of those voluntary customers to make their own decisions.

We’d even applaud certain cases where technology does hurt bystanders, as was the case when London burned a lot of coal — and caused a lot of lung cancer in the process — in order to industrialize society and raise the standard of living across the board.

We think the world was better off once industrialization was complete. We generally credit science, progress, and the human spirit and its ability to overcome most obstacles.

Some of these are unpopular positions among the people we expect to read this. We describe these positions not to win your favor, but to make clear our honest beliefs, and to underscore that AI is different.

Why is AI different? Why do we fail to trust the human spirit and the power of scientific inquiry, in this one particular case?

The answer is: scope. Gambling your own life is different from gambling the lives of your customers, which is different from gambling the lives of innocent bystanders, which is different from gambling the entire human species.

Doubly so when your field is woefully immature and the odds of winning your gamble are awful.