Lest anyone accuse me of bargaining in bad faith here, let me start with this admission: I don't think AI is intelligent; nor do I think that the current (admittedly impressive) statistical techniques will lead to intelligence.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/16/pascals-wager/#doomer-challenge
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/2
https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-full-employment/
Now, that said: among some of the "AI doomers," I recognize kindred spirits. I, too, worry about technologies controlled by corporations that have grown so powerful that they defy regulation.
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Cory Doctorow: Full Employment
Locus OnlineCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/3
I just don't think we need AI to do those things. I think we should *already* be worried about those things.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/4
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885
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Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disrupter
EventbriteCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/5
http://lawzero.org
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LawZero | Home
lawzero.orgCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/6
Now, as I've stated (and as I said onstage) I am not worried about any of this. I *am* worried about AI, though.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/7
I'm worried that the seven companies that comprise 35% of the S&P 500 are headed for bankruptcy, as soon as someone makes them stop passing around the same $100b IOU while pretending it's in all their bank accounts at once.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/8
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/13/always-great/#our-nhs
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/9
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/08/process-knowledge-vs-bosses/#wash-dishes-cut-wood
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/10
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/#graceful-failure-modes
But Bengio disagrees. He's very smart, and very accomplished, and he's *very* certain that AI is about to become "superhuman" and do horrible things to us if we don't get a handle on it.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/11
Though I didn't say so at the time, this struck me as an AI-inflected version of Pascal's wager:
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
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argument that posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/13
As of this moment, the human race has lit more than $1.4t on fire to immanentize this eschaton, and it remains stubbornly disimmanentized. How much more do we need to spend before we're certain that god isn't lurking in the word-guessing program?
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
Not according to Elon Musk. Musk says we need to deconstruct the solar system and build a Dyson sphere out of all the planets to completely encase the sun, so we can harvest every photon it emits to power our word-guessing programs:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/elons-next-big-swing-dyson-sphere-satellites-that-harness-the-suns-power
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/15
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/16
But as Bengio and I got into it together on stage at the Montreal Centre, it occurred to me that maybe there was some common ground between us.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/17
Because there's a sense in which Bengio and I are worried about exactly the same thing. I'm terrified that our planet has been colonized by artificial lifeforms that we constructed, but which have slipped our control.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/18
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/19
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/15/artificial-lifeforms/#moral-consideration
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/20
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/21
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/30/zucksauce/#gandersauce
Every moment that we remain stuck in the enshitternet is a moment of existential risk. At the click of a mouse, Trump could order John Deere to switch off all the tractors in your country:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/22
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ottawa
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/23
So here's my side-bet on Pascal's Wager.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/24
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/25
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/eof
I think that's a pretty solid offer.
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Dan Hatton
•Bruce Simpson, Ph.D.
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/19
Bruce Simpson, Ph.D.
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/18
j5v
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/18
Of course the marketed answer is to funnel companies into buying yet more agentic LLM systems to take that load, but it doesn't stop the slop. It just creates more dependency on LLMs. It's a trap.
ꓤɔᴉʇɐʇS
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: religion
Building a word sorting machine that's designed to sort words in order of what produces the most convincing sentence will not bring us any closer to god, nor will it be one.
Best it can do at helping us "meet god" is in the context of where that's a death threat. (which I honestly feel like is not an accident)
James Jensen
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Bruce Simpson, Ph.D.
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/12
Log 🪵
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/12
AI can easily exploit this flaw in human cognition. It can put those in the same statistical wordforms as truth.
Bruce Simpson, Ph.D.
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/10
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Alex Russell
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/5
Maurice Meilleur
•The Handover
wwnorton.com