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Fuck all these AI researchers on twitter man.
To quote a FT comment this morning:
Simply put, Western governments are now too inept, too corrupt, or too stupid (or all of the above) to properly respond to collective action threats whether real or imagined.
Take this AI nonsense: Chances are high this is nothing more than a public relations campaign to pump Silicon Valley's bags. Anything that makes AI sound incredibly powerful, especially warnings of doom, translates to investor ears as "those companies will be worth a lot of money innit."
And in making the media rounds, this bright-eyed, bushy-tailed 27-year-old sounds more like a pitchman for the coming IPOs of Anthropic and Open AI than a prophet of the AI apocalypse.
But put aside the skepticism: If the threat is worth taking seriously, then governments should make a serious effort to investigate.
Is the doomsday threat of AI at all credible? Okay fine: Set up something like the 9/11 Commission, or Operation Warp Speed, or some other deadly serious government effort to get to the bottom of this.
If the AI companies propose an actual existential threat, then government bodies need to get on the stick, right now, and investigate the daylights out of this threat, with all the power of subpoenas, technical experts, forced testimony, everything, to get to the bottom of it and determine the actual credibility of that threat.
And if this threat turns out be fake PR nonsense -- if it is just more posturing as many strongly suspect it is -- then people need to go to jail for this nonsense.
If the AI companies are just promoting a fake doom narrative for the sake of their upcoming trillion-dollar IPOs, then it should be a crime -- an actual, literal crime -- to pollute the public discourse with alarmist nonsense that also amounts to securities fraud while degrading the mental health of hundreds of millions if people.
If the threat is real on the other hand -- if it isn't nonsense -- then governments should take real and immediate action to mitigate the threat.
Just imagine if some other industry tried this.
Picture a company that makes nuclear power plants saying "oh by the way, there is a 10% chance our reactors could turn into a supercharged hydrogen bombs and kill hundreds of millions of people."
Or imagine if an agricultural giant said "oh by the way, our latest round of genetically modified crops have a 10% chance of mutations that could wipe out half the planet."
Of course governments would not put up with that from some other industry. The reaction would be shock, then fury, then immediate action to investigate the claims for credibility and, if credible, shutting down the threat immediately -- and if not credible, arresting people for fraudulent intent with mass scale consequences.
But no -- because it is Silicon Valley, and because governance today is a toilet bowl train wreck of a dumpster fire, the claims will not be taken seriously, except as alarmist public discourse, and Open AI and Anthropic will almost certainly be allowed to get away with this garbage.
Again, the reason for alarm is that heads should be rolling for this -- very senior people should be fired or forced to resign at the very least, if not arrested and sent to jail for criminal negligence and fraudulent intent whether the claims are true or not.
That is because, if the claims are true then Holy Nightmare Batman; and if they are false (which is much more likely) then this kind of mass psychosis and mental harm being perpetrated on the public for the sake of making IPO bank (remember that investors love these "AI is so powerful" narratives) should be shut down immediately.
Genuine fear is warranted right now, but not fear of rogue AI becoming skynet. The fear comes from the fact governments are no longer competent to manage risks or anything much else at all.