Book Club - If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies

Welcome to the Seattle Intellectual Book Club! The 41st book we are reading is called "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All" by Eliezer Yudkowsky & Nate Soares.

Come grab a drink, discuss and hang out.

*Please note that it's okay if you don't finish the book but please make an effort to at least start reading the book.

Agenda:
6:30pm - 7:00pm Arrive & please buy drinks to support our venue if able
7:00pm - 8:30pm Group Discussion

Please let me know if you have any suggestions for upcoming books for the group to read, venues to meet at or any other constructive feedback on the format.

Here is the link to our Discord (text or voice chat rooms) to discuss anything book club related.
https://discord.gg/dRHj5ssaAy

Like what we are doing and want to chip in? Please consider donating. Donations will help cover the cost of the meet up registration. (about $400/year). Venmo is @Seattle_Intellectual_Bookclub

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Here is the book description from Amazon:

"INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | The scramble to create superhuman AI has put us on the path to extinction—but it’s not too late to change course, as two of the field’s earliest researchers explain in this clarion call for humanity.

"May prove to be the most important book of our time.”—Tim Urban, Wait But Why

In 2023, hundreds of AI luminaries signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence poses a serious risk of human extinction. Since then, the AI race has only intensified. Companies and countries are rushing to build machines that will be smarter than any person. And the world is devastatingly unprepared for what would come next.

For decades, two signatories of that letter—Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares—have studied how smarter-than-human intelligences will think, behave, and pursue their objectives. Their research says that sufficiently smart AIs will develop goals of their own that put them in conflict with us—and that if it comes to conflict, an artificial superintelligence would crush us. The contest wouldn’t even be close.

How could a machine superintelligence wipe out our entire species? Why would it want to? Would it want anything at all? In this urgent book, Yudkowsky and Soares walk through the theory and the evidence, present one possible extinction scenario, and explain what it would take for humanity to survive.

The world is racing to build something truly new under the sun. And if anyone builds it, everyone dies.

“The best no-nonsense, simple explanation of the AI risk problem I've ever read.”—Yishan Wong, Former CEO of Reddit"