Death by AI

Paul Bloom · 20 Jul 2026 · smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net ↗

2 korrents from this piece

Paul Bloom did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
One vivid, disturbing case outweighs all the statistics in how people judge a technology, and that instinct should be resisted rather than indulged.

Their wordsI agree with Koopman that people really are swayed by such cases. I also think it’s a dumb-ass gut response that we should try our best to get over.

Interesting
Our reading
A new technology is judged against perfection rather than against the thing it would replace, which is why it always comes up short.

Their wordsThe second failure of rationality is a status quo bias: an unseemly attachment to the way things currently are; an irrational overweighing of the cost of the new. We effectively end up comparing a new technology to perfection, so it’s no wonder it comes up short.

Interesting