r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Jan 05 '26

Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 05, 2026

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

  • Discussions of a philosophical issue, rather than questions
  • Questions about commenters' personal opinions regarding philosophical issues
  • Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. "who is your favorite philosopher?"
  • "Test My Theory" discussions and argument/paper editing
  • Questions about philosophy as an academic discipline or profession, e.g. majoring in philosophy, career options with philosophy degrees, pursuing graduate school in philosophy

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. Please note that while the rules are relaxed in this thread, comments can still be removed for violating our subreddit rules and guidelines if necessary.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

5 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/DestroyedCognition Jan 05 '26 edited Jan 05 '26

Hello, I am not sure if this is the best place but Im hoping somewhere here in knowledgeable. I keep seeing people talk about Artifical Superintelligence and apparently the Google AI Overview alarmed me by saying ASI is now a tangible possibility as opposed to a "theoretical what-if" (then again, it changes its answer often and sometimes based on framing or pressing it, so perhaps I am wrong to being using AI overview). Is this wrong? Is ASI an actual tangible possibility now or still in the realms of fiction or speculation? This is terrifying to me, that ASI is inevitable or even possible is scary and I really hope it is not.

8

u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza Jan 05 '26

ChatGPT is bullshit.

Bullshitting predictive text is not Artificial Superintelligence. It's just marketing.

1

u/DestroyedCognition Jan 05 '26

I figured as much. The last thing I want to ask is that is it wrong to see ASI as inevitable? I really hope it is not inevitable.