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U.S. President Donald Trump’s rechristening of artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” seems unlikely to stick, executive order notwithstanding. But it was at least good for some ironic smirks among the very same AI “doomers” and effective altruists that the administration has spent the past few weeks bashing.

If you’ve been following AI debates for a while, “superintelligence,”—albeit spelled as one word, not two—immediately brings to mind the 2014 book of that name by the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, a foundational text for those who see AI as an existential risk to humanity.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s rechristening of artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” seems unlikely to stick, executive order notwithstanding. But it was at least good for some ironic smirks among the very same AI “doomers” and effective altruists that the administration has spent the past few weeks bashing.

If you’ve been following AI debates for a while, “superintelligence,”—albeit spelled as one word, not two—immediately brings to mind the 2014 book of that name by the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, a foundational text for those who see AI as an existential risk to humanity.

But the doomer vs. accelerationist debate—over whether super-intelligent AI, or “artificial general intelligence,” will usher in either an age of unfathomable prosperity or the literal apocalypse—sidesteps an uncomfortable reality. AI is already capable of causing a global catastrophe, not because it’s an all-powerful machine god that sees puny humans as a hindrance to its goals, or is misaligned with human values to the point that it turns us all into paperclips, or even is used to design a new bioweapon. It’s dangerous simply because people increasingly trust it even though it still screws up all the time.

Some of the most........

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