The year is 2056, and scientists have just created the first computer with superhuman intelligence. Aware of the risks, the programmers trained it in ethics. The machine functions flawlessly. Aiming to maximise happiness in the universe, and calculating that sentient beings are happy less than half the time, the computer exterminates all sentient life. The balance of happiness increases from negative to zero - only there's nobody left to enjoy it. Futurologists refer to this sort of misunderstanding as perverse instantiation, and Olle Haeggstroem is concerned about it. He's also worried that genocidal ETs might annihilate Earth, that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could produce an uncontrollable black hole, and, more prosaically, that increased use of human growth hormone could have some strange and unpleasant consequences.
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