That’s an excellent example why AI doomerism is bogus
completely unlike nuclear war fears weren’t.
Nuclear war had very simple mechanistic concept behind it.
Both sides develop nukes (proven tech), put them on ballistic missiles (proven tech). Something goes politically sideways and things escalate (just like in WW1). Firepower levels cities and results in tens of millions dead (just like in WW2, again proven).
Nuclear war experts were actually experts in a system whose outcome you could compute to a very high degree.
There is no mechanistic model behind AI doom scenarios. There is no expert logically proposing a specific extinction scenario.
You can already trivially load up a car with explosives, drive it to a nearby large building, and cause massive damages and injury.
Yes, it’s plausible a lone genious could manufacture something horrible in their garage and let rip. But this is in the domain of ’fictional whatifs’.
Nobody factors in the fact that in the presence of such a high quality AI ecosystem the opposing force probably has AI systems of their own to help counter the threat (megaplague? Quickly synthesize megavaxine and just print it out at your local healt centers biofab. Megabomb? Possible even today but that’s why stuff like Uranium is tightly controlled. Etc etc). I hope everyone realizes all the latter examples are fictional fearmongering wihtout any basis in known cases.
AI would be such a boom for whole of humanity that shackling it in is absolutely silly. That said there is no evidende of a deus ex machina happy ending either. My position is let researchers research and once something substantial turns out, then engage policy wonks, once solid mechanistic principles can be referred to.