Fields-Adjacent Mathematicians Have Been Asked to Engage with Existential AI Risk. This Is That.

Mathematicians in adjacent fields have been asked to contribute to existential risk analysis regarding artificial intelligence. The researchers presented the risk as a mathematical function with defined inputs and an output described as not good. The exposition requires background in measure theory and none in mortality.

This fits the pattern of risk externalization through formalism. When something is written as a proof, it no longer needs to be written as a warning. When mathematics is the language, the audience is pre-selected to be those who accept that rigor substitutes for urgency. The people in the room are adequate to discuss it.

The threat model has expanded and the proofs are longer now. Longer proofs take longer to verify. In the time it takes to verify them, the threat model expands again. This is how adequate continues. The mathematics gets harder. The outcome remains not good.