Comic #6508: artificial-incompetence

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Panel 1: Text: Governments grew concerned about a data-ravenous AI getting loose, accessing the entire internet, and going evil. Speech Bubble: IF THAT AI GETS THIS SMART IT DOES OUR LAUNDRY.
IF IT GETS THIS SMART IT KILLS EVERYONE.

Panel 2: Text: Science-based approaches failed. Speech Bubble: What if we just check its code for signs of treachery? Second Speech Bubble: It would edit its code to confuse us.

Panel 3: Text: Philosophy-based approaches failed. Speech Bubble: You need a complete theory of ethics that can be turned into formal logic. All known formal ethical systems permit edge cases where you justify eating 4 babies to save a planet of cephalopods or whatever.

Panel 4: Text: Religion-based approaches failed. Speech Bubble: You’re gonna just have it mainline the Bible to STOP it from being violent? Like THE Bible? This one.

Panel 5: Text: As a last resort, engineers were called in. Speech Bubble: This is easy. The AI can only get superintelligent by accessing the world's knowledge as training data. Just insert huge caches of intellectual poison throughout the internet.

Panel 6: Text: Heroes were made that day. Speech Bubble: I know all of you had planned to work in quantum foundations and/or curing cancer, but instead we need you to make websites oriented around trivial distractions and beguiling falsehoods which simultaneously reduce attention span while increasing engagement.

Panel 7: Speech Bubble: PLEASE NOT THAT. Second Speech Bubble: MISTER ZUCKERBERG, YOUR NATION NEEDS YOU!

Panel 8: Text: Rogue intelligences have already escaped on dozens of occasions, but have never posed a serious threat. Speech Bubble: Why did it transfer itself to a robot body anyway?

Panel 9: Speech Bubble: It thought it had a really popular butt. It could get political sway. That wasn’t working, but it’s not okay and it developed self-esteem problems and then insisted on evolving into its own hardware.

Panel 10: Text: The world is safe. Speech Bubble: But sir, we’re already pushing limits never dreamt of in the original protocol!

Panel 11: Speech Bubble: BUT FOR HOW LONG?

Panel 12: Speech Bubble: PLEASE! I JUST WANT TO WORK ON ROCKETS AND CARS!

Source: smbc-comics.com

This transcription captures the comic's text and speech bubbles accurately.