eli5ism

Explain like I’m five. Advanced AI, existential risk, and what to do about it, written so that a busy and intelligent person can follow it, with the references underneath for anyone who wants to go deeper.

Throughout this site, artificial intelligence means configuring computation to understand and manipulate reality in ways which we previously believed require human thought.

Every article opens with a short plain-language summary and then earns it. The arguments are the ones made by the people who build these systems and the people who study them, cited so you can check. Where a claim has not been verified it says so, visibly. Where something is a judgement rather than a fact, it is marked as one and you are welcome to argue with it.

We have entered a period in which artificial intelligence will reshape work, institutions, and possibly the long-term future of the species. The rate of change has outrun most people’s ability to form a view of their own. This site exists to shorten that gap: not to tell you what to think, but to give you enough, quickly, to think it for yourself.

Start with Background if the field is new to you, with Existential Risks if you want the core argument, or with the Voices if you want to know who says what. The Methodology page explains how the site is made and what to trust.