alt Hacker NewsWe don't actually need anybody worrying about silly hypothetical scenarios — at least not as paid employees. There are already a surplus of sci-fi authors doing that.
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If organizations actually succeed in making a future AI smarter than us, then how do you hope that it takes actions that are aligned with our interests?
AI safety is mostly a sex cult in Berkeley:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49831269 article is gone. archive: https://archive.is/QMo1k
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985
Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse: https://www.iankduncan.com/personal/2026-09-16-sex-ai-and-th...
Edit: I have no take on sex cults, just adding additional info to the parent comment I'm responding to, thats is not just sci-fi authors, there is another demographic.
What makes you think, the scenarios in question here would be "silly"?
Is it that "chatbots" can't come out of the screen to immediately harm you physically?
Let's say they simply manage to take down the internet. How many would die?
The way it works in practice seems to be something like: If a risk is covered in sci-fi, people will say "that's just sci-fi", and proceed to not worry about it. So arguably, science fiction authors writing about hypotheticals is actively counterproductive for addressing said hypotheticals.
Imagine, for example, if a major piece of pandemic fiction was published in 2019, trying to explore how a pandemic would work out in modern society. Doubtless, many would've responded to news about COVID-19 by saying "it's just sci-fi, nothing to worry about".