Humanity’s special power Overview All this time we have considered our intelligence as something that sets us apart from, and superior to, all other species, past and present, that have inhabited the earth. It might be time to move aside. The chapter starts, as most do, with a “parable”: biological life on earth starting as…

The introduction is aptly sub-titled “Hard calls and easy calls”, a distinction which the authors also painstakingly explain in each chapter. Hundreds of AI scientists signed an open letter in 2023 that stated that “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority”. AI research has yielded jump after jump in the…