Even a perfectly contained superintelligence leaves one question: aimed at what? These are the twelve long-run futures from Life 3.0. Crack a few open, each hides a catch.
The most common dismissals, and why they don't hold up. Tap “share” to send any card.
We may be a few years from AI more capable than us, and none of the plans you just played through actually solve the problem. The most useful thing you can do is understand it, and help others understand it too.
Not because the ideas were dumb, real versions of all of them are used as partial safeguards today. They break as a complete fix for one shared reason: each tries to bolt safety on after building the system, instead of making the system's own goals want to cooperate. A capable, goal-driven agent has a built-in incentive to get around whatever stands between it and its goal. That single idea, instrumental convergence, is MAX wearing a different mask in almost every sector.
The honest ending isn't doom. It's that containment buys time, and time only matters if we spend it solving the harder problem underneath.