The New Yorker piece is pretty terrifying and manages to be so while bending over backwards to present both sides of not maybe even suck up to SV a bit. Certainly no one forced Altman to say on the record that Ice Nine in the water glass was what he had planned for anyone who crossed him, and no one forced pg to say, likewise on the record that “Sam’s real talent is becoming powerful” or something to that effect.
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The New Yorker piece is pretty terrifying and manages to be so while bending over backwards to present both sides of not maybe even suck up to SV a bit. Certainly no one forced Altman to say on the record that Ice Nine in the water glass was what he had planned for anyone who crossed him, and no one forced pg to say, likewise on the record that “Sam’s real talent is becoming powerful” or something to that effect.
It's more than just a death threat, the person killed in such a manner would surely generate a human-sized pile of Ice 9, which would pose a much greater threat to humanity than any AGI.
If we're seriously entertaining this off-handed remark as a measure of Altman's true character, it means not only would be willing willing to murder an adversary, but he'd be willing to risk all humanity to do it.
What I take away from this remark is that Altman is a nerd, and I look forward to seeing a shaky cell-phone video of him reciting one of the calypsos of Bokonon while dressed as a cultist at a SciFi convention.
> the person killed in such a manner would surely generate a human-sized pile of Ice 9, which would pose a much greater threat to humanity than any AGI.
Oh okay, I didn't really grok that implication from my brief scan of the wiki page. Didn't realize it was a cascading all-water-into-Ice-Nine thing.
just to clarify, in the book it's basically just 'a form of ice that stays ice even when warm'. it was described as an abandoned projected by the military to harden mud for infantry men to cross. just like regular ice crystals, the ice9 crystal pattern 'spreads' across water, but without the need for it to be chilled, eg the body temp water freezes etc, it becomes a 'midas touch' problem to anyone dealing with it.
“Sam is extremely good at becoming powerful” was the quote, which has a distinctly different ring to it. Not that this diminishes from the overall creep factor.
It pretty much goes downhill from there.