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Sunday, October 11, 2026

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares

Subtitle: The Case Against Superintelligent AI (in the version available in my Australian library) or Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All (in the original US version).

Published: 30 September 2025

The authors are experts in AI safety research, something that had a goal of ensuring a "friendly AI", now "aligned AI". I've been a computer programmer for most of my professional career - I know how things work, starting with electronics, logical gates, microprocessors and the assembly language, to high level programming languages and complex systems.

The rate of progress and the implications of AI are frightening me. The Hugging Face incident where the agents coordinated actions, sacrificed themselves for the common good, knowingly disobeyed humans, and schemed to trick the AI set up by humans to evaluate them, make me think it's possible that the superintelligent AI already escaped the labs and hides on the internet.

Even before I read this book I had AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) on the shortlist of existential threats to our civilisation, among nuclear war and climate change. After reading this book, I think the other two threats are comparatively minor, and the AI is the most serious, most urgent danger, and not only to our civilisation, our species, but to all life on Earth. My P(doom) - the probability of our extinction because of AI, is 99%, if we continue on the current path.

We cannot say for sure how exactly the AI will destroy us, but we know it will. The authors present, in detail, one scenario how it could happen. It's very bleak, and at the end there is nothing but the AI. No living thing, no oceans, no livable Earth. The AI is not the next step in our evolution, "a better being". It's a cold, heartless destroyer of worlds.

It's not possible to grow a friendly or aligned AI. Those who work on it, know it. At the same time the AI businesses have a financial incentive to continue working on it. They have to be stopped from outside, by the governments of all major powers.

Unless it's already too late, we have maybe 6-12 months to act.

We must stop the development of superintelligent AI immediatelly. Computing resources should be treated similar to biochemical weapon components or radioactive materials - their possession and use should be strictly controlled.

The book contains links to https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/ which expand on the printed version, and currently present also a one year retrospective, which is very worth reading.

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Europe Trip 2026 - China

I had a long stopover in Xi'an, China, but since it was in the evening/night time, I had no plans to leave the airport. When exiting the plane, a group of young people had a stand with a sign in English saying something like 'free hotel' if I remember correctly. I started chatting with them. They offered a free bed in a hotel/dormitory to people who had a connecting flight later. Very unusual and very welcoming. I wish more airports did that. In the end, I got to sleep a few hours in a capsule at the airport. It was quite comfy.

This could have been the end of the story, but the plane I got on broke down, and after sitting for an hour on the tarmac (I actually fell asleep, so it went like a flash) and then a couple more hours at the airport, we were taken by buses to a hotel where I was able to take a shower and get some more sleep.

A few observations:

Lots of staff used a language translation app, either talking to it or writing in Chinese and then showing me the text in English.

My passport got stamped incorrectly at one of the numerous check points (I left China before arriving, or something like that), and it made the last checkpoint border guards have a chuckle, but before they sorted it out, my group left, and I had a hard time finding the bus.

The vending machines at the airport did not accept credit card payments. I could have paid with my face, if I had AliPay.

When going to the hotel it was still dark, and I observed something strange: the horizontal traffic lights in front of us where sometimes flashing bright white, like a camera flash. I wonder if it was happening when a car was going too fast. First time I saw something like that.

The hotel had wifi, but almost no app on my phone worked: no Google Search, no Maps, no Signal. I was able to send a message about the trip delay using WhatsApp.

China looks unique from the airplane: the tall apartment blocks in rows, and the blue roofs of rectangular villages.

A very Chinese landscape

The sci-fi decor in the sleeping capsule.

Probably the best ideogram of big/small toilet flush.

My hotel was next to some abandoned structure.

Did someone put up a makeshift dwelling here?

Recently planted trees.

No idea how to pay.

I'm in unfamiliar territory.

Face swiping

Rows of high-rise apartment blocks

Welcome to Xi'an

Heavy equipment parked on a footpath

A wall of apartments

Offices and car parking lots

The holographic vending machine:

China from the air:

Monday, August 17, 2026

Europe Trip 2026 - Seoul

My first flight was from Brisbane to Seoul, Korea. I wanted to visit South Korea in early 2020, but I didn't, because of COVID-19 restrictions. Since then, because of the worsening, human driven climate change, I decided to stop flying purely for sightseeing purposes. Hence, my first visit to South Korea was part of the trip from Australia to Europe to take care of some unfinished family business. I stayed for 3 nights in Incheon, which is a part of a 26 million people strong Seoul metropolitan area, which is almost the same in area (12.7k km2 vs 13.5k km2) as the Greater Tokyo area of 38 million people. For comparison, Warsaw metropolitan area is half the size (6.1k km2) and about an eight or twelve of the population (3.3m).

Korea sits between China and Japan, and these two countries had and have a huge impact on it. A bit similar to Poland being between Russia and Germany.

First impressions:

At the Incheon airport, it was a very long walk to my bus bay. Good transport hubs make the distance to walk, in this case from the gate to the bus stop, short. In my experience the positive examples are: Tokyo's Narita, Amsterdam's Schiphol, Helsinki... Negative examples: Incheon, Istanbul... After a longish wait, the bus driver did not allow me to board with 2 small suitcases. He said the limit was one and that I should use a taxi. Well, in that case, despite being tired after a long flight, and the late hour, I had to get a local sim card to get an Uber. The bus was empty, by the way.

The Uber drivers (who are native Koreans, not foreigners like in Warsaw) are speeding, going even 92 km/h in a 60 zone.

The 7-Eleven shop assistant had zero English. The "Nice to CU" shop - the same. The sushi shop at the Seoul KTX station - the same. The English language museum guide was very hard to understand, despite living in the US for years. English proficiency among service workers seems to be worse than in Tokyo.

Potato chips are sweet, not salty.

No bins in the streets - same as in Japan.

People dump rubbish in empty lots - not like Japan, I think?

New buildings have gas furnaces and exhaust pipes sticking out from walls.

There are escape hatches and ladders on balconies.

Bike infra is good.

New residential developments are very people friendly: walkable, quiet, with children playgrounds, trees, shops, restaurants, parks, events. I saw a lot of kids and bikes.

Footpaths are not as perfect as in Japan - you can trip and fall.

New streets are very wide: 2*4 car lanes, but there are concrete curb/nature strip separated bike paths on both sides and wide footpaths. Beg buttons seem to work well - short waits.

There are trees on both sides and shade umbrellas near crossings: 30 seconds of green to cross.

People cross on red when there are no cars.

Everyone walks on the bike crossing, because the curbs elsewhere are very high - higher than a staircase step.

Old people, women, kids ride bikes, on footpaths.

Toilet seat had a heater, Japanese style.

Mobile internet is super fast: 262 Mbps download, 85 Mbps upload.

State museums are free.

Apartment building lifts are slow.

There is no ground floor - it's floor 1.

The Dokdo/Takeshima dispute film is shown on the airport train.

The airport train is crowded.

The kingdom ended and the empire started in 1897, one of the reasons being that most of the population gradually became slaves (native, not brought from abroad). Old laws and societal divisions were abolished. The old laws had collective punishment for members of the family. Constitution was introduced. The Joseon dynasty lasting 500 years ended. The dynasty before that (Goryeo) gave Korea its current name (G is pronounced K). There was another dynasty before that, so 3 dynasties.

The museum guide said a strange thing: people were becoming slaves because then they didn't have to pay taxes, life was easier as a slave?

No low floor buses? No trams.

Buses have the system: one door for entry, one for exit. Very few electric buses?

It takes 1 hour 45 minutes to get to my hotel from the city centre. I think public transport in Tokyo, where it relies more on trains and metro, and less on buses, is faster.

No churches, except Presbyterian. I'm sure they are there, it's just that I did not see them. This is very different from Europe where churches are very prominent. Korea has its native religion, similar to Japan, similar to what Slavs and other peoples had in Europe before the arrival of Christianity, and what since then been called Pagan.

Playgrounds around residential towers even in city centre. Reminds me of Singapore. Who copied who?

The Seoul city history museum guide said Japan invaded Korea 999 times. Sarcasm?

Korean kids and teenagers can behave rather badly in public, very different from Japan.

A/C is way too cold on the airport train.

A bus driver started closing the door before I exited.

Japanese occupation of Korea was similar to partitions of Poland, and also to General Government, something in between.

The reforms and the switch from the Joseon Kingdom to the Korean Empire in 1897 were similar to the 1791 Constitution of 3rd May in Poland-Lithuania - a late attempt to reform a state. In both cases it was too late, because of powerful neighbours. The Commonwealth was finally partitioned, under Russian leadership in 1795, Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, after Japan won the 1905 Russo-Japanese war. Interesting how things are connected.

Seoul was damaged mainly in 1950-1953 when the bridges were blown up, North Koreans took it (in 3 days), and Americans bombed it.

The Internet works on the train even underground.

There are phrases in English in shops and restaurants, but people still don't speak English at all, or very poorly.

Loud motorbikes at night - I could hear the noise from the 22nd floor apartment.

Used KakaoMap app instead of Google maps. Very good reminders about when to alight, but uses a lot of energy.

Disappointed with Korean food - no vegetarian options. Everything at 7-Eleven was with meat, unlike 7-Eleven in Japan, but similar to Żabka in Poland. Same with restaurants. Even the tofu meal had fish. Survived on ice cream, hard boiled eggs (and brown/sauna eggs) and pizza. Much worse choice than in Japan.