 ign. ex-@micronauta

This kind of thing is the natural next step of globalization and all of human society, globally, becoming more correlated through technology. The interconnectedness first extended to states: Around the time of the early industrial revolution everyone suddenly knew where every other country was, and knew what borders everyone claimed. Soon you could ship packages anywhere on the planet, or physically travel anywhere on the planet. Then, with almost realtime satellite footage, you could see anywhere on the planet. When I was in high school, I was really excited about the idea that if humanity could build reliable, fast, cheap space technology we would be able to expand beyond Earth and "lose track of ourselves" once again: Be back on a frontier, know far less about each other, diffusing into the wider universe like a drop of ink in a glass of water. No one government would be able to oppress everyone, and if we spread onto multiple planets and between them, there would be more cracks for people to disappear into. When I learned about progress toward AGI, and that deep learning might "work" to get us there, none of that made sense anymore. Advanced AI was an understanding, analyzing, and tracking technology that we wouldn't be able to outrun. If something went wrong with AI, it would affect all of us, even if we'd spread off of the planet. It could track us all down in the darkness of space. We're all in this together now. Unless we find strong countervailing forces, all of our actions affect everyone else's more than they ever have. We'll be able to track each other, trick each other, hack each other, infect each other. Technology seems to connect all things, and connecting all things seems to centralize them, and centralizing them makes them fragile.