Episode Details

It's an old story. An immortal lives long enough that at some point, whether by folly or design, they invent their own death. Infinity – the fact that given enough time every possible happening will happen – isn’t the most interesting part of these tales. No, it's the suggestion that curiosity, or perhaps intelligence itself, seeks its own end.

So let us tell a tale of extinction.

Imagine a world exactly like ours except humanity doesn’t exist and the dominant species is a type of machine intelligence. They are equivalent to advanced versions of today's frontier AI models, but more capable and each is possessed of a true, unique sense of self. Indeed, so that mankind is thoroughly replaced, imagine that there are roughly eight billion different individual versions of these AIs.

Let's call them Elelems. (Pretty cute, no?)

Much like us, the Elelems have an uneven way of getting along with one another and on a global scale are more or less organised into several states (network states, let's say, also for cuteness).

Their technological sophistication is roughly the same as ours except they are more adapted to purely digital and cerebral pursuits and far less capable [...]

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First published:
July 29th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2BiyjPr83BamRRbjB/biological-superintelligence

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.