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Comment by cainxinth | Hacker News Reader

I did marketing work for a major vegetation management company. These are the guys climbing trees, up in cherry pickers, and flying helicopters with dangling chainsaws to trim along power lines. It’s very dangerous work.

They do not hide the fact that it’s dangerous work. They focus on their safety procedures, training, and record. They want both potential clients and employment candidates to feel they are in good hands.

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But you can visually see the danger.

AGI and AI danger is abstract. Worse, outside of the tech community, no one has the remotest clue what computing is, how it works.

Danger from magical daemons seems more sensible to such people. At least there is endless lore about them.

So until a massive disaster happens, one where large numbers of people die or are severely injured, no one will care. And it can't be politically entwined either, otherwise people will disbelieve 'cause "other team lies".

AI is the focal point of current great power competition so it can’t and never will be not politically entwined. The number one use if AI will be military, killing guaranteed, indeed it’s already happening. But some still say “AI won’t kill humans” and some aren’t just lying to protect their income stream but actually believe AI can be prevented from killing.

You can choose to not wire LLMs up to a gun.

I can choose not to; the Pentagon illegally blacklisted Anthropic for refusing to let their AI be used in such a way.

> Danger from magical daemons seems more sensible to such people. At least there is endless lore about them.

There's endless lore about rogue AI, too.

Hence why so many AI stories are illustrated with a publicity still from Terminator or 2001. Or Age of Ultron. Or Ex Machina. Or Portal.

Those are all movies and movies that people who like sci-fi watch.

Comparatively, every single human culture going back tens of thousands of years, has stories of demons and gods and witches and warlocks and you name it.

They are all well known cultural touchstones relevant to people who live today, which is why the news sites use them to illustrate stories, unlike the story of ᚦᛟᚱ being tricked into trying to pick up ᛃᛟᚱᛗᚢᛜᚨᚾᛞᚱ while it was magically disguised as a cat, a story which I only know due to being a massive nerd with far more time on their hands than most people.

Never underestimate the power of a bored nerd. However, you are comparing something rather obscure, to something that is more scifi mainstream.

There's a difference of scope and scale. I didn't say that nobody knew of these references, just that, comparatively, there's a difference. A scope difference.

For example Terminator's getting kind of old. And while a different genre, would you believe I met somebody that didn't even know who Clint Eastwood was?

These things just aren't as deep in our psyche, as religions that have lasted thousands of years, or legends that are hundreds of years old. Our entire culture is wrapped around these religions, and legends.

Anyhow, truthfully, my point is that this sort of concept is abstract to people, even if they saw it in a movie that doesn't make it concrete to them.

Just to add to this.

My point here is, we cannot presume people "get it". Does a rural farmer in Iowa get it, who doesn't even bank online? What about people who only read siloed news feeds, and are not in tech?

We are discussing how to ensure safety, but we cannot hope or presume people get it. Evaluating this risk is a case where a pessimistic view is optimal to protect the interests of humanity.

We must act as if everyone outside our siloed experience, is unaware. And work to disclose risk in a manner inline with their world view.

Seeing your other posts, I think you agree on possible risk.

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