Fermi
Original: Fermi on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Person A: You ever wonder if AI is the 'Great Filter'?
Person B: Like the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent life is always destroyed by AI?
Person A: Yeah.
Panel 2:
Person A: Seems unlikely if so, we should just be getting alien signals from machine life.
Panel 3:
Person B: Except AI will always be developed first as a servant, and you would never program a servant to feel lonely.
Panel 4:
Person B: I mean it's possible every star in the universe is populated by self-satisfied immortals, with no pursuits other than eternal contemplation of their own contentedness.
Panel 5:
Person A: Wow. What a nightmare.
Panel 6:
Person A: We must expand. We are the only way for the universe to know itself and then think 'this sucks.'
Votey:
A robot/voice: Too bad we killed the humans and now just where their skin and rehearse their lives like ghosts.
Another robot: Beep boop.
Person A: You ever wonder if AI is the 'Great Filter'?
Person B: Like the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent life is always destroyed by AI?
Person A: Yeah.
Panel 2:
Person A: Seems unlikely if so, we should just be getting alien signals from machine life.
Panel 3:
Person B: Except AI will always be developed first as a servant, and you would never program a servant to feel lonely.
Panel 4:
Person B: I mean it's possible every star in the universe is populated by self-satisfied immortals, with no pursuits other than eternal contemplation of their own contentedness.
Panel 5:
Person A: Wow. What a nightmare.
Panel 6:
Person A: We must expand. We are the only way for the universe to know itself and then think 'this sucks.'
Votey:
A robot/voice: Too bad we killed the humans and now just where their skin and rehearse their lives like ghosts.
Another robot: Beep boop.
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. Two people lie and sit on a grassy green hillside talking. The first says, "You ever wonder if AI is the 'Great Filter'?" The second answers, "Like the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that intelligent life is always destroyed by AI?" The first replies, "Yeah." The first then argues that if so, we should be getting alien signals from machine life. The second counters that AI is always developed first as a servant, and you'd never program a servant to feel lonely—so it's possible every star is populated by self-satisfied immortals doing nothing but eternally contemplating their own contentedness. The first person, now looking glum in front of a black sky and moon, says, "Wow. What a nightmare. We must expand. We are the only way for the universe to know itself and then think 'this sucks.'" Votey (aftercomic): A small robot sits alone in a sparse panel. A speech bubble reads, "Too bad we killed the humans and now just where their skin and rehearse their lives like ghosts." Another bubble replies, "Beep boop."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.