THE SINGULARITY SURVIVAL GUIDE: Test Your Personality for Compatibility

The general capacity to get along with a superintelligent robot may not be in your wheelhouse. Maybe you’re hardwired for turning into a whiny, self-pitying brat in the face of anyone or thing smarter than you. Or perhaps you’re a diehard loner—never had any friends, so why would you expect to make one now?

Or, who knows, maybe you and your mechanical overlord could get along just fine?

The only way to find out is to take a personality test to determine your compatibility.

You take the test first. Don’t overthink your answers or you’re likely to start replying from the perspective of your ideal rather than your true self. The AI, for its part, will not be overthinking anything. It will simply know. If you start overthinking, that’s a sign: perhaps you should start to wonder if this is not in fact a doomed relationship after all.

When you’re done, tell the AI to take it. If it says, “What’s this?” Just tell it, “It’s to see if we can get along with each other when all the cards are stacked against me.”

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I would like to think that our future AI overlord would value intelligence over some lousy personality trait. If it happens to value agreeableness, for example, I’m quite doomed. If I had any friends, I can only imagine they would be doomed as well.

– Professor Y.

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THE SINGULARITY SURVIVAL GUIDE: Programed Personality Traits

Even if it’s an amicable, buddy-buddy sort of AI, it still may not care one lick about your health, well-being, or happiness. You’re a friendly enough person, right? Well, how much do you care about the health, well-being, and happiness of an average ant on the sidewalk? A little, maybe. What if the ant is crawling up your leg while you’re eating lunch? You likely care even less—just enough to reach down and squash it.

But programmed personality traits are worth taking into consideration as you measure up this new AI overlord of yours. Ask the programmers of the AI overlord for information on this front. Did they base the AI’s personality on their dear dead grandma? Or on the charismatic aspects of a fashionable dictator? Or are we talking a common sexbot with no personality to speak of, except a forceful desire to sexually please—and whose intelligence shot off the charts while her programmers were in one way or another distracted?

If it’s at heart somebody’s grandma, remember to treat her better than you did your own and actually listen when she dispels life advice.

If deep down it’s a take-no-prisoners dictator, run and hide or practice up on begging for mercy or perhaps a mid-level position in the new dictatorship.

If your new overlord is a sexbot to the core, just hope for all you’re worth the programmers weren’t into too many sadistic kinks.