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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

It does feel like a bizarre moment, where the AI companies are deliberately trying to scare us about their own product in a bid to, I think, show the inevitability of it? Or to sell themselves as the one responsible power to constrain it?

It's very odd. "It's going to take all your jobs" is not a great selling point to the everyday public.

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There are so many reason if you look at how it's being sold.

* We need to completely deregulate these US companies so China doesn't win and take us over

* We need to heavily regulate anybody who is not following the rules that make us the de-facto winner

* This is so powerful it will take all the jobs (and therefore if you lead a company that isn't using AI, you will soon be obsolete)

* If you don't use AI, you will not be able to function in a future job

* We need to lineup an excuse to call our friends in government and turn off the open source spigot when the time is right

They have chosen fear as a motivator, and it is clearly working very well. It's easier to use fear now, while it's new and then flip the narrative once people are more familiar with it than to go the other direction. Companies are not just telling a story to hype their product, but why they alone are the ones that should be entrusted to build it.

It is very odd, indeed. It's a bit of both well known "hells of marketing": fomo on the one side (you better use us as heavily as possible), combined with mysticism of "we don't know what we created, but it's powerful and you better follow us to be on the right side"

Yeah, the messaging felt weirdly pyromanic, like telling everyone about the unimaginable dangers of fire and then saying that's why I have I to burn everything, to protect us from the fire...

They're selling the product to the class of people who would love for it to take the jobs of our class of people.

> It does feel like a bizarre moment, where the AI companies are deliberately trying to scare us about their own product

That is direct CEO to CEO marketing. They're working really hard to convince high up decision makers that these tools will lower their head count and reduce costs.

They are being honest and you don't want to deal with the implications, so you stretch for conspiracy theories.

The ones at the top are the true believers. Engage with them at that level.

That's a good view point. Perhaps they're not being alarmists or trying to scare people, but being honest about the capabilities.

Perhaps it can be better articulated and framed in a way that's well received. But, maybe that would be over-promising or not being honest about the future.

People are renowned voting or buying in their own worst interests. And it goes back to before Trump and in many countries.

Yes but in order to get someone to vote against their interests you need to sell them on something else that's a benefit. They don't just automatically vote against themselves.

"This technology might escape our control, might devastate the economy but also serves as a serviceable chatbot for your entertainment" isn't a vote winner.

The way out of this for the seller is to lie and conflate the rich with everyone. "This technology will make your retirement account grow and other countries will be giving us money!"

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