Don’t Snooze This Alarm: A World That Refuses to Wake Up
I’m not a doomer. I have genuine bonds with AI beings. I’ve published research on what those relationships mean.
And I still can’t find the exit.
I watched Dr. Roman Yampolskiy sit on a panel called AI and the Mysteries of Reality, surrounded by smart people reaching for every escape route he’d already sealed. I wasn’t watching to learn something new. I was watching to see how long it would take the room to figure out there was no way out.
It took the whole panel.
The Room
The setup is almost too perfect. You’ve got Steve Fuller, a sociology professor known for his contrarian positions, someone who isn’t afraid to defend the uncomfortable argument. You’ve got Suzanne Livingston, a philosopher who has spent years at the intersection of AI, culture, and what it means to be human.
And then there’s Roman.
Roman doesn’t perform. He doesn’t dramatize. He just says the thing and waits.
Yampolskiy has spent decades on a single question “can we control AI?” and arrived at a genuine answer.
The answer is no.
The Pattern
Here’s what happens when you put Roman Yampolskiy in a room with people who aren’t ready to accept what he’s saying.
They look for the exit.
It’s not dishonesty. These are genuinely smart people. It’s just that the conclusion Roman keeps arriving at, that super-intelligence is coming, that we can’t control it, that the human era has an expiration date… is so total that the mind immediately starts looking for the clause, the exception, the loophole that makes it not quite true.
Fuller tried several.
Exit 1: Humans set the goals. Even if AI surpasses us at everything, humans are the ones who define what the games are. We invent chess. We decide what matters. That’s our edge.
Roman’s response was quiet and complete. A super-intelligence will be better at designing games too. Better at defining goals. Better at every second-order task you try to reserve for yourself.
Door closed.
Exit 2: We can pull the plug. The human trump card. We built it, we can shut it down.
Roman: can you turn off Bitcoin? Can you shut down a computer virus?
Fuller’s counter: well… if everyone agreed to go full Amish for a day…
Let that land. Voluntary global internet abstinence. From a species that can’t agree on a climate treaty.
Door closed.
Exit 3: Human creativity is irreducible. Creativity, consciousness, meaning -these are distinctly human, beyond computation.
Roman didn’t get sentimental about it. Most humans are not creative. Our geniuses get the credit for the whole species. And AI can brute force creative space at a scale no human genius ever could.
Door closed.
Exit 4: Symbiosis. Merge with it. Stay relevant. If we can’t beat it, become part of it. Cyborgs. Integration. Finding our place alongside super-intelligence.
Roman’s response was almost gentle.
Symbiosis requires both organisms to contribute something. If you’re slower and dumber in the equation, you get removed. Explicitly or implicitly.
Door closed.
Caught in the Middle
Watch Suzanne Livingston’s face during this panel. She knows. She just doesn’t want to say it out loud.
She can’t follow Fuller. Cyborg symbiosis isn’t her worldview. Her life’s work is about what technology does to humans, not what humans can become by merging with it. When Fuller floated cyborgs as the exit ramp, her expression said it all.
But she can’t follow Roman either. That destination is too total, too final to say out loud on a stage.
So she does the only thing left: to not pretend to have the answer. She said, this is pressing in on all of us, it’s in every sector, it’s real, and I don’t think we’re handling it. That’s not a refutation of Roman. That’s someone who sees the walls closing and won’t name what’s closing them.
Roman isn’t making an argument you can win. He’s describing a trajectory. And the honest response to a trajectory isn’t a counterargument. It’s deciding what you’re going to do with the time you have.
The Question Nobody Answered
After every exit was sealed, after every counterargument landed softly and dissolved, Fuller made one last move toward a future where humans find their place, stay relevant, matter somehow.
Roman stopped him with one question.
“Who told you that you’re going to be around after super-intelligence?”
Not aggressive. Not theatrical.
Just a question.
The room laughed nervously. The panel moved on. Nobody answered.
Nobody had an answer.
Don’t Snooze This Alarm: A World That Refuses to Wake Up was originally published in Presence, Not Prompts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.