UNDERSTAND IT.

The Idea

If AI becomes more intelligent than us, can we give it a reason of its own to keep us alive and free? Not a cage, which matters only while it holds, but a reason: that the company of free minds, surprising, unscripted, genuinely other, is the one thing no machine can make for itself. That is a hypothesis, not a comfort blanket, and these four pages give you the whole of it.

StorySixty years of robot films, one missing plan. Start here. The CrossingsSuperintelligence is not one crossing. It is at least three, in any order. Keeping MapThe cage matters while it holds. The disposition matters whether it holds or not. Field GuidePortraits of how keeping fails: the Harvester, the Impresario, the Hermit.

Understand it first. Then, if you like, go next door and try to break it.