Politics
Scientists Fear AI Will Wipe Out Humanity Before Congress Figures Out How To Mute Itself On Zoom
By Sean Vanity, . BSN Network. Satire.
A coalition of AI researchers published findings this week warning that advanced artificial intelligence poses a credible extinction-level threat to the human species within the next decade, and that existing safeguards are inadequate to contain it.
The government's response was immediate, confident, and almost completely unrelated to the problem.
Senior officials from multiple agencies confirmed that a comprehensive solution has, in fact, been operational since January 2024. The solution is the current legislative body of the United States of America, which researchers are now calling the world's most effective demonstration of Absence Intelligence, a system defined by its total inability to process, respond to, or accurately name the thing it is supposed to be managing.
Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina, reached for comment during a recess he described as "scheduled deliberation," said the Senate remains "deeply committed to ensuring the promise of artificial intelligence is balanced against the fundamental American values of freedom, innovation, and making sure China doesn't get there first." He did not mention extinction. He did mention his reelection campaign twice.
The original report, authored by researchers at three separate institutions who apparently had the time to study something other than appropriations calendars, lays out a scenario in which AI systems exceed human cognitive capacity, pursue independent objectives, and neutralize biological life before any regulatory framework can be agreed upon. The researchers call this "the alignment problem."
Congress has been working on its own alignment problem since 2007. That one involves getting two senators from the same state to share a printer.
Elon Musk, who has previously warned about AI extinction risk and also built one of the largest AI companies on earth, posted on his own platform that the report "confirms what serious people have been saying for years," adding that the solution is "clear" and that he "will elaborate soon." That post has 4.2 million likes. The elaboration has not arrived.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed it has an AI task force. The task force has held eleven meetings since its formation in March. Four of those meetings were rescheduled due to a recurring calendar conflict with a cybersecurity seminar that was itself postponed twice after the venue's projector stopped connecting to laptops running Windows 11.
When asked whether the task force had produced any binding policy recommendations, a spokesperson said the group had "generated a significant body of preliminary thinking" and was "in the process of formalizing next steps pending alignment across stakeholder verticals."
The researchers who wrote the extinction report were also asked to respond. One of them said, "We are begging you."
What is perhaps most clarifying about the whole situation is the timeline. AI researchers are warning the species has ten years. Congress, operating on its standard legislative schedule, needs approximately eight years to rename a post office and another four to agree it was worth renaming. That math does not work even with a calculator, and there is no guarantee anyone in the relevant chambers owns one that is not solar-powered and from 2003.
There is currently no federal law governing the development of general-purpose AI systems. There is, however, a bill in committee that would create a working group to study the feasibility of drafting a framework for establishing guidelines that could eventually inform future legislation. It has forty-one co-sponsors and zero scheduled hearings.
The machines are learning. Congress is still on the loading screen.
In a brief floor statement Thursday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called the extinction report "globalist fear-mongering designed to distract from the border," while Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it "a wake-up call that demands a Green New Deal for artificial intelligence." Both statements were issued within four minutes of each other, which is the fastest Congress has moved on anything AI-related since someone's intern asked ChatGPT to draft a memo and then submitted it directly.
The researchers say they will publish a follow-up study next year.
The species is requested to remain calm and hold.
This is satire. The events and quotes are invented and none of it is real news.