Existential risk, AI, and the inevitable turn in human history

In several of my books and many of my talks, I take great care to spell out just how special recent times have been, for most Americans at least. For my entire life, and a bit more, there have been two essential features of the basic landscape:

1. American hegemony over much of the world, and relative physical safety for Americans.

2. An absence of truly radical technological change.

Unless you are very old, old enough to have taken in some of WWII, or were drafted into Korea or Vietnam, probably those features describe your entire life as well.

In other words, virtually all of us have been living in a bubble “outside of history.”

Now, circa 2023, at least one of those assumptions is going to unravel, namely #2. AI represents a truly major, transformational technological advance. Biomedicine might too, but for this post I’ll stick to the AI topic, as I wish to consider existential risk.