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AI limitations

Human specialization can replace enough machine cognition for a technically advanced civilization to persist.

Trained human specialists can substitute for the cognitive work machines would do, so an advanced society can function without AI.

True
22 explicit · 0 implied
False
00 explicit · 0 implied
Not applicable
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Explicitly true2 entries

0
Policy scenario·2026AI-generated draftSource unchecked

AI 2040: Plan S, Shutdown

Thomas Larsen · Romeo Dean · Brendan Halstead · Eli Lifland · Ryan Greenblatt · Daniel Kokotajlo

A new President wins a global moratorium because China fears an American superintelligence more than it wants its own: chips are tracked and verified to run only inference, algorithm research is banned, and mutual auditors watch every project. Existing AIs keep working and get polished into near-AGI products, covert projects crawl under a scientific taboo, and the halt holds for some years while the world argues about whether and how to restart.

AI prohibitionOrdinary life with AIHuman–AI coexistence
+1Mixed future
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Turning point: 2027–2030Original source

A technically advanced civilization persists on frozen 2029-level AI plus human work, with progress continuing in energy, space, and robotics and the world feeling “increasingly cyberpunk.”

0
Novel·1965AI-generated draftSource unchecked

Dune

Frank Herbert

People hand their thinking to machines, a few people use those machines to enslave the rest, a century-long religious crusade destroys the machines, and a ten-thousand-year civilization is built on the prohibition and on human substitutes that concentrate power in new hands.

Power concentrationMixed futureHumans using AI
+2Cognitive dependenceAI prohibition
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Turning point: Fictional calendarOriginal source

Mentats, Guild navigators, and the Bene Gesserit are shown doing the work of computers, and the civilization runs interstellar travel, banking, and war on them. The novel does not ask whether this is realistic; it assumes it.

Not applicable34 entries