Episode 8.98: Reactions to imminent AGI are a bereavement process: we mourn the loss of our status.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross famously described the bereavement process in five stages: we first deny; then we are sad; then we often become angry; anger later begins to become reconciliation and finally acceptance. We cannot change what cannot be changed; someone we love, something we love has gone forever. That’s exactly what is happening over artificial general intelligence as it progressively displaces us from our final resting place at the head of creation by showing that we are really not all that intelligent after all.