AI will make biological extinction risks worse before it makes them better by MichaelDickens

An ar­gu­ment goes: If we don’t build al­igned ar­tifi­cial su­per­in­tel­li­gence, we risk driv­ing our­selves ex­tinct for some other rea­son. We should rush to build ASI quickly, in spite of the risks—the longer we wait, the more vuln­er­a­ble we are to ex­tinc­tion from a differ­ent cause. Other than ASI, the biggest ex­tinc­tion risk is syn­thetic biol­ogy. Some lab could (ac­ci­den­tally or on pur­pose) de­velop a highly trans­mis­si­ble, 100% fatal su­per-plague that wipes out hu­man­ity....