<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # The language of AI safety becomes misleading... > {{The language of AI safety becomes misleading whenever safety is treated as a destination rather than a gradient. There is safer aviation, not safe aviation; safer medicine, not safe medicine; and safer roads, reactors, buildings, drugs and industrial processes, each purchased by understanding failure modes while accepting that zero risk is generally achieved only by abolishing the activity.}} Surgery becomes perfectly safe when nobody performs surgery. Flight becomes perfectly safe when nothing leaves the ground. Fire becomes perfectly safe when nothing burns. Intelligence augmentation becomes perfectly safe when intelligence augmentation does not occur. Once stated this way, the absurdity becomes visible: t{T{he purpose of civilization has never been to abolish every dangerous capability, because civilization itself is largely the accumulated history of learning how to inhabit dangerous capabilities without being destroyed by them.}} **Source:** [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match. There Is No Safety. There Is No Retreat.]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The language of AI safety becomes misleading whenever safety is treated as a destination rather than a gradient. There is safer aviation, not safe aviation; safer medicine, not safe medicine; and safer roads, reactors, buildings, drugs and industrial processes, each purchased by understanding failure modes while accepting that zero risk is generally achieved only by abolishing the activity. Surgery becomes perfectly safe when nobody performs surgery. Flight becomes perfectly safe when nothing leaves the ground. Fire becomes perfectly safe when nothing burns. Intelligence augmentation becomes perfectly safe when intelligence augmentation does not occur. Once stated this way, the absurdity becomes visible: the purpose of civilization has never been to abolish every dangerous capability, because civilization itself is largely the accumulated history of learning how to inhabit dangerous capabilities without being destroyed by them.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-language-ai-safety-without-being-destroyed ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->