There absolutely is a difference. Nuclear war is considered a likely extinction level event for humanity. A war between the US/NATO and the Soviet Union could take out major cities around the globe within hours, and the resultant nuclear winter would blanket much of the planet within a month making living above ground impossible.

GP's comparison is apt here.

Just a minor correction, even though I agree with your point: the Soviet Union is no longer a thing, despite Putins wishes to the contrary :)

Right, but its nukes are still around and pointed at NATO :).

>”An atomic bomb explodes. A bomb explodes. Both are very destructive. Is there a difference? I say no”

Atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs are orders of magnitude more destructive and also produce fallout. How in the world can that difference be dismissed?

Not the original commenter, but one interpretation is that “dead is dead”. You can’t be “more killed”, so past a point, all dangerous things are equally dangerous.

That may be what the original commenter was going for, but it only works if one ignores all other externalities. Their reasoning is just too reductive.

They make the mistake of thinking that “dead is dead” means lethality is not factor. What’s the difference between a bootleg firecracker and a Russian ICBM? Nothing, both can kill you so it makes no difference to treat one exploding as any more significant than the other.

They take a similar mindset of “intelligence is intelligence” and I find flaws with that as well.

This. I don't see nuclear weapons as any worse than conventional weapons because ultimately people die. Is it comforting or otherwise somehow better for people to be killed by conventional weapons instead of nuclear weapons? I find such a proposition preposterous.

All bombs are bad, whether they're conventional or nuclear is irrelevant. For that matter, all wars are bad and should be avoided unless no other options remain.

Likewise, "AI" is just as much a threat as any other intelligent being or computer program depending on which line of thought you subscribe to. "AI" is not a "gravest of dangers".

>”I don't see nuclear weapons as any worse than conventional weapons because ultimately people die.”

If you believe this, I am genuinely curious as to what you would consider the “gravest of dangers” to be.

I think of threats that are unknown and/or can't be adequately defended against:

* Asteroid impacts like Chicxulub.

* The Sun eventually inflating into a red giant and eating Earth, though this assumes we're both still around and haven't become spaceborne en masse.

* Pandemics such as The Black Death and, indeed, covid for a recent example.

* Social, political, or commercial intrigue.

* Cancer.

"AI" is a known threat that can be adequately defended against, so I agree with the sentiment that it's stupid to call it a "gravest of dangers".

We have a better chance of stopping a potential impactor asteroid, if it is detected early, than defending against a nuclear war.

We would have years to deflect an asteroid, but just minutes to react to a mass ICBM launch.

We have the technology available now to deflect asteroids (ironically, with nukes!), but no country has built up sufficient ballistic missile defence to shield themselves from a first strike.

The Sun expanding (or changing in any impactful way) won't be a problem for hundreds of millions of years. Nuclear war could be triggered today. The US is literally sending about a hundred billion in weapons (total) to kill the soldiers of a nuclear-armed belligerent state... right now!

Pendemics tend to fizzle because pathogens that kill too fast are self-limiting. Merely making people sick is selected for, because that leads to increased disease spread by the infectious -- but alive -- victims.

Societies, politics, and commerce have been more stable than ever in human history, and are become more stable over time, not less.

A cure for cancer in the next two decades is looking increasingly likely. Techniques such as individual rapid gene sequencing, custom mRNA anti-cancer vaccines, CRISPR/Cas9, AlphaFold 3, etc... are building up to a toolkit that will eventually allow us to treat pretty much any human illness, possibly including old age itself.

I would say at the very least that the empire of Japan clearly evaluated them differently when it surrendered unconditionally directly after being attacked with this new technology.

You are saying magnitudes don't influence the identity of something, this is obviously not true. I don't literally attract other objects, the Sun does. The difference is mostly magnitude of mass.

>I would say at the very least that the empire of Japan clearly evaluated them differently when it surrendered unconditionally directly after being attacked with this new technology.

The atomic bombs certainly played a part in Japan surrendering, but it wasn't the only one. They were also facing a land invasion from the Soviets, had an utterly depleted military, waning support from the public, and a potentially devastating land invasion by the US on their doorstep.

>You are saying magnitudes don't influence the identity of something, this is obviously not true.

I am considering these things very dryly and very objectively. I am putting aside emotional pressures and processes and only considering the results which are ultimately all that matters. We already know how much damage an ill-willed intelligent being can achieve, we already know how much more efficient computers can make certain tasks. "AI" is not a "gravest of dangers", given that knowledge.

> I am putting aside emotional pressures and processes and only considering the results which are ultimately all that matters.

But what results are you really considering? The "dead is dead" approach makes everything equally meaningless, because in couple hundred million years the Sun will burn the Earth to cinders and everything here will be dead too. Or, some 100-120 years from now, everyone now alive will be dead, etc.

Processes, and emotional pressures which steer those processes, matter too. In theory, machine guns could be used to kill everyone on the planet; in practice, it's economically and socially impossible - too much effort, too many people involved. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, can realistically achieve this outcome. Which is why nukes can be used to keep the world mostly at peace through MAD, while conventional weapons can not.

OK, perhaps we should go back to your first statement:

> If "AI" is actually intelligent, then it's no worse a threat than any living being known to man.

Combined with:

> I am putting aside emotional pressures and processes and only considering the results which are ultimately all that matters.

Imagine a super-intelligent being that can invent a biological agent that is incurable to current science, spreads rapidly through aerosols, and causes 100% guaranteed death if not cured. That superintelligence can furthermore list a recipe of this biological agent using household items that may be available to anyone who has contact with it, allowing an untrained individual to create the agent after receiving instructions from the super intelligent being. This being you would classify as "no worse a threat" than any living being known to man? Is that "putting aside emotional pressures and considering the results"?

Or are you saying that an intelligence, no matter how advanced, can never do the above?

A hypothetical magnitude difference of intelligence obviously poses a threat to us, what other explanation is there for the mass extinction of most animals after the Anthropocene started.

>This being you would classify as "no worse a threat" than any living being known to man? Is that "putting aside emotional pressures and considering the results"?

I mean, any man sufficiently ill-willed can certainly do all that today. I am unbothered, to say the least; I have better things to do with my limited time.

>what other explanation is there for the mass extinction of most animals after the Anthropocene started.

You're wildly overestimating the effect humanity has on the ecosystem, many species also went extinct before we showed up. The species we see today are merely a very small handful of all the species that ever graced this planet.

> I mean, any man sufficiently ill-willed can certainly do all that today. I am unbothered, to say the least; I have better things to do with my limited time.

Uh, no? In fact humans do not currently have a way of causing human extinction (nukes wouldn't do it with current stockpiles). That would require scientific advancements which we have yet to make, and most possible routes seem pretty non-trivial... except, unfortunately, AI.

> Likewise, if "AI" is actually intelligent then it is no worse a threat than a bumbling baby or a Vladimir Putin or a dog, among other living beings.

I think a dog and a dictator might both be able to have negative impacts, but treating them as equal just shows a desire to troll. A dog can only bite so many people.

Can you explain, with your worldview, why the nature of geopolitics turned abruptly and completely upon the invention and proliferation of nuclear bombs? What was it about the nuclear bomb that caused it to be the defining structure of the cold war?

Do you believe MAD can exist without nuclear bombs?

Do you believe any country has enough conventional ordinance to end human life on the entire planet? You must know more about this than me, I've never heard of something like this.

Any of the major military superpowers have more than enough conventional boomsticks to end all human life. It might take slightly longer than if nukes were used, but that's hardly comforting.

(For confused readers: no, they don't. Not even the nuclear stockpiles would be enough to cause human extinction, even if they were turned deliberately to that end.)

I absolutely believe that if there was a project where every nuclear weapon was systematically used for the purpose of making humans extinct, it would be successful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb

>After one half-life of 5.27 years, only half of the cobalt-60 will have decayed, and the dose rate in the affected area would be 5 Sv/hour. At this dose rate, a person exposed to the radiation would receive a lethal dose in 1 hour.

>After 10 half-lives (about 53 years), the dose rate would have decayed to around 10 mSv/hour. At this point, a healthy person could spend up to 4 days exposed to the fallout with no immediate effects.

People can't stay in bunkers for 20 years at a time, just to emerge into a radiated hellscape.

> People die when they are killed.

Yes, indeed, which is why we should avoid creating something that will kill everyone...

...so I guess I'm glad to hear there's no difference in the amount of damage that can be inflicted by a baby, and by Vladimir Putin, and superintelligent AI really can't be any worse than either.