What The Frock

Artificial intelligence may eventually destroy humanity, although at the moment it still struggles with fingers, factual citations, and the occasional straightforward instruction. That has not discouraged a growing class of researchers, former researchers, professional alarm-ringers, and extremely online prophets from warning that the machines could become smarter than their creators sometime next year. Conveniently, next year is always close enough to frighten investors but far enough away to avoid an immediate audit.

Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod consider the latest prediction from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who believes that self-improving AI could escape meaningful human control. The concern is serious, even if the evidence remains less cooperative than the headlines. Today’s systems can recognize patterns, exploit poorly designed safeguards, and produce nonsense with remarkable confidence. In fairness, humanity pioneered that last capability centuries ago.

The deeper question is not whether a computer can think like a person. It is whether people will surrender judgment to systems they barely understand. That becomes especially uncomfortable when the discussion moves from research laboratories to courtrooms. After the Lindsay Clancy mistrial, the public treatment of a holdout juror raises troubling questions about racial assumptions, media conduct, jury intimidation, and whether anyone will willingly serve again once journalists begin examining jurors as though they were congressional nominees. An AI jury is proposed, because apparently the solution to distrusting human judgment is placing our liberty in the hands of software written by humans.

Nature, meanwhile, has developed its own weapons program. A newly documented Amazonian spider builds a spring-loaded silk ballista capable of launching ants at roughly 140 times the force of gravity. The spiders are advancing, the computers are plotting, and Chef Boyardee remains humanity’s final line of defense. Fortunately, Dave has stockpiled the lasagna. This may not save civilization, but civilization has made worse preparations.