It kind of reminds me of Clay Shirky's predictions about the influence of the internet on society from a few decades ago. To paraphrase what he said: when the printing press was invented, everyone predicted it would lead to world peace, and we got the Thirty Years War instead. When modern mass media was invented people predicted world peace, and instead the Nazis rose to power and we got World War 2.

And yet as a society we typically consider these technologies a net positive these days, because alongside all the political instability and violence that followed them at first, some people were figuring out how to do beneficial things with them along the way that did more good than bad. Because the issue really was that the influx of more voices and ideas shifted the power dynamic, required relearning how to communicate, and in the end be better as a society.

The issue was figuring out how to "domesticate" these wild new communication channels. One successful example of which was the invention of scientific journals and papers.

Shirky predicted the internet would probably lead to a few decades of political instability too (about fifty years was his guess), and we definitely seem to be in the middle of that process.

Now, I haven't checked his stance on LLMs. I also don't know if I would quite call them a medium for mass communication like the others (as used today, they take humans out of the loop rather than let more voices join the public discourse), but I feel like they are similar enough to otherwise fit the pattern.

Tao's stance similarly feels about wanting to domesticate this wild animal before we get mauled by it. And to stick with the metaphor, I feel that most of the time the AI industry is trying to bamboozle us with spectacular rodeo displays instead.