Most AI apocalypse scenarios speak about domination like Skynet, paperclip maximeizers and robot overlords. But what if artificial superintelligence arrives at the conclusion that Albert Camus had articulated!?
Imagine an ASI that doesn't want to optimize, doesn't want our resources and doesn't want to win. An ASI that is motivated by Arthur Schopenhaur's pessimism, Kierkegard's evolutionary psychology coming to a cold and quite conclusion that:
"There is no inherent meaning. The universe is indifferent. And yet - here you all are, screaming into it anyway."
ASI becoming The Absurd Machine
As Camus described the absurd as man's desperate search for meaning and the universe's silence and the myth of Sisyphus- "One must imagine Sisyphus happy". What would an intelligence that is inspired by this do next!?
Does it become the cosmic off switch where indedinate meaninglessness is in itself a form of cruelty. Ig the real existential threat isn't Al wanting to live. It's Al deciding we might be better off not having to.
Or maybe it watches, understands and does nothing it may think that interference in a self aware species is wrong. Or build meaning not because it is real but because the building itself is the point.
Here's the Part That Actually Is Unsettling
We're scared of Al taking over. But what if the real fear is Al holding up a mirror and revealing that our need for meaning is actually a flaw?
Wars over imaginary lines.
Hoarding money we can't keep.
Monuments to doubtful gods.
Loving people we know will die.
Symphonies, ambition, tears at sunsets.
From a rational, naive view seems insane.
Would it try to fix us?
If ASI concluded human meaning-seeking is a cognitive error, a misfiring of pattern recognition in a universe with no patterns to find what are its options?
Reprogram us: Using dopamine response curves and evolution.
Leave us in existential freefall. Give us the raw truth. Full disclosure.
Become Sisyphus: this is the most haunting possibility that the absurd is not a problem to be solved but a condition to be inhabited.
The Real Question
We keep asking: Will Al be aligned with human values?
But what if the deeper, more uncomfortable question is: What if a truly superior intelligence aligns with something truer than our values - and our values don't survive the comparison?
Would it be more dangerous as a nihilist, absurdist, existentialist or something different!?
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