About whether superintelligent AI would mostly face mundane real-world problems rather than breakthroughs.
Has this happened?
Yes 44 (35%)Not sure 32 (26%)No 48 (39%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether superintelligent AI would mostly face mundane real-world problems rather than breakthroughs.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Even if the AI solves "Fermat's Last Theorem" type problems quickly,
It won't. This latest fad with AI becoming self-aware reminds me of how obsessed people were about finding the philosopher's stone back in the 18th century. It didn't happen for alchemy (we got chemistry instead, which is nice), it won't happen for AI (we'll probably get something like chemistry instead, which will be nice, but we won't get any artificial "sentient" entity).