AI Existential Risk: Why This Catastrophe Would Be Different // DIETMARs OPINION
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Why compare AI catastrophes to historical human disasters?
Everybody's talking about the AI catastrophes, so I will also give my ideas to it. I did once, but now it's like a little more uh the history side of things, thinking about catastrophes for humankind and setting it in relation to an AI catastrophe. Welcome to an experimental episode of the Beginner Sky to I. Trying to wreck it on the streets while walking. Walking is good for thinking. But anyway, um it's Dietmar from Argo Berlin at the microphone. Great that you are here and listening. And I hope you learn something interesting. You get an interesting viewpoint. And don't forget to follow the podcast. Go to beginnersguide2.a There you can get the newsletter, or you just hit subscribe on your podcasting app or on YouTube.
How did local catastrophes evolve into global risks during industrialization?
But let's jump into the episode.
There's basically two kinds of catastrophes for humankind that are possible. One is local one and the other is a global one. And humankind for a long time didn't have global catastrophes in a sense of that could eliminate the whole humankind. Most catastrophes were local to a certain point. One of the catastrophes, the old catastrophes that was nearly global global would be the pidemics because it reached everyone from China to Europe and that was quite big, but it was still in a sense of looking all the whole planet local local epidemic. Things got global only once industrialization started, because then we could connect everything. Maybe even with colonialization before, but that was slow. But industrialization made everything quicker and we had other opportunities.
Not just reaching people and like meeting the other person and um shaking hands and then transmitting a the virus or something. But the first thing that was global in this in this sense and influenced us was the pollution. But what basically is a local catastrophe?
What makes the AI 2027 scenario a unique existential threat?
Local catastrophe means you have a city, have a village, even older, and something hit you and kills you. Might be there's a horde of the wolf um back coming, eating all your people, or it's a bacteria or virus that kills the village, maybe gets transmitted to another village. It's really local. Or like in America's the Americas you just kill off every big animal and then you just have some admittedly big um guinea pigs left for food so you have a catastrophe in the sense of you uh don't have enough protein to have healthy diet. Or you're in the Mediterranean and you think it's a good idea to build lots of ships out of wood and don't replant everything you cut down from trees. Uh so um a Greek ship was uh approximately twelve years and you then you had to um build a new one because the wood was old, so you just cut new wood, and if you don't replant
Mm coming now to Italy or to Greece or to Croatia, so you see the typical karst uh mountains there, that's the consequence. It's obviously a climate change that happens there, you change the whole situation, the whole weather there. So cutting down all the trees, extinguishing ecosystems in the Mediterranean. That definitely influenced how the weather was there. But it was still local.
Why is a potential AI‑driven extinction different from past global crises?
It was just the Mediterranean. It was a big area, still local. But At a certain point humans were smart enough to invent stuff that influenced the whole world. This moment is the industrial revolution. It's funny that I'm just now racketing here in front of a uh power plant, one of the testimonials of industrial revolution here in Berlin. Yeah, totally fits because this power stuff changed the world in the first time in a global um way. Because what was different before everything was local, killing animals, um cutting down trees, viruses. This situation was man made or had to travel with man, so it was really easy to not reach every location because reaching every location is I mean it's quite a hard way, uh hard stuff to do.
So now but you now have um uh power plants and you make power out of coals and you have um the possibility to put everything in the air and the air travels around the world. That was the first time that in other parts of the world the consequences could be seen of your actions in this part of the world.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why compare AI catastrophes to historical human disasters?
0:00–0:58
2
How did local catastrophes evolve into global risks during industrialization?
0:58–2:33
3
What makes the AI 2027 scenario a unique existential threat?
2:33–4:05
4
Why is a potential AI‑driven extinction different from past global crises?
4:05–5:26
5
How should governments and companies regulate advanced AI to avoid extinction?
5:26–6:59
6
What arguments exist for treating low‑probability, irreversible outcomes seriously?
6:59–7:59
7
What actions can listeners take now to help shape a safer AI future?
7:59–9:26
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from A Beginner's Guide to AI
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