Comment by klik99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klik99 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve noticed a weird thing about the discourse around this, that it can only be a marketing thing or a true belief, as if everyone working in AI has a monolithic opinion. The tweet kicking off this article has that assumption “it’s not a marketing thing, many people truly believe it”.

It’s not an either/or. Many sincerely held beliefs can be used by cynical actors in cynical ways. It can be both a cynical marketing ploy by the C-suite and a genuine fear.

Personally, based on my experience with AI, the only dangers with the current technology is a) massive loss of employment, b) deployment by humans to control critical infrastructure that LLMs shouldn’t be in control of. Both of those are real, society changing risks that framing the issue as “once we reach the singularity everyone could die” minimizes. Obviously their concerns are possible, but >10% is a random guess. The loss of jobs and how that affects an already K shaped economy is already happening, and nothing is being done for that

the only dangers with the current technology is a) massive loss of employment, b) deployment by humans to control critical infrastructure that LLMs shouldn’t be in control of.

Can we look at a possible economic disaster scenario for a brief second?

Bankers for OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly seeking an investment-grade credit rating after their potential initial public offerings (IPOs) to cut down borrowing costs for their ambitious AI projects.

The companies' bankers from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have been in talks with credit rating agencies. The goal is to tap into the $11.7 trillion corporate bond market post-IPO, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

That, right there, is a major concern.

https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/openai-anth...

Yes, but I don't feel that counts as a danger of the technology - that's a danger of these escalating, unicorn based investments that have to make bigger and bigger bets to survive until the bets as big as the US whole economy. The issues with our financial markets are a whole other set of concerns, but it's not inherently "about" AI. AI is just a vehicle for these smash and grab shenanigans.

The internet, and to some extent our own brains, incentivize the extreme positions. Either it is mind-bendingly important and will change everything, and very soon (for good or for ill), or it is a total nothingburger and everyone who says otherwise has an agenda. Nobody wants to read about how AI will deepen long-standing class tensions or pose enormous new challenges for education or force regulators to rethink property taxation.

It all boils down to accountability. If you tell people there is a massive, unsolvable problem, then you don't need to talk about what you're doing to fix it. The labs have taken this approach by saying that they're willing to talk, at some point in the future, about maybe taking unspecified steps to slow down capabilities research, as long as everyone else agrees and it makes sense to the investors and it's not too cold in SF that morning. Likewise, if you tell people that AI is going to have minimal or no impact on the world, then there's nothing to mitigate. But if you tell people that AI is going to cause serious - but solvable - problems, they're going to want to hear solutions, and nobody wants to come up with any solutions.

It's a true belief, but that doesn't mean it's valid or correct. Many doomsday cults had true believers, and were able to retcon their beliefs when the predicted day came and went. AI doomers have the luxury of not having committed to a specific date or method (but see https://x.com/archerships/status/2095971206847738362)

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