I’m Pacing Myself

I’m not sure there’s a ten percent chance AI will kill all humans. But I do think there’s a 100 percent chance that the people currently in charge of AI companies and regulation will make bad choices for the rest of us human survivors. Regardless of public displays of reflection, self-regulation tends to only really benefit the self. And effective government regulation under our current administration seems about as likely as the White House lawn being lined with windmills. But it’s notable that the calls for caution are coming from inside the industry. “Four days after a researcher publicly quit his job at Anthropic, warning that top AI firms are not ‘acting responsibly’ and that their products might be on track to ‘kill us all,’ the company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, seemed to basically agree. ‘We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,’ Amodei wrote in a 3,800-word essay.” (The length of the essay doesn’t say much for Claude’s editing capabilities.) Will Oremus in The Atlantic (Gift Article): AI’s Code-Red Moment. And here’s a human-edited summary from the NYT (Gift Article): What Anthropic’s C.E.O. Argued in His Call for Slower A.I. Development. Other AI execs like Sam Altman voiced similar concerns, while Elon Musk says he’s been issuing similar warnings all along. If you’re not absolutely certain we need an AI slowdown, this should convince you to be for it: Trump is against it. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” (Trump, Musk, Altman … it’s enough to make you long for the day when machines take over.)

+ China dismisses AI slowdown calls and blasts ‘fearmongering’ from U.S. tech leaders. Don’t kid yourself. China is worried about threats posed by AI, too. Especially when it comes to threats to the regime. Hyperbole aside, the financial upside associated with AI and the international race among superpowers for AI dominance combine to make any slowdown remarkably unlikely, even as the need for one becomes increasingly remarkable.

+ We’ve already seen technology dramatically alter the military playing fields from Ukraine to the Gulf. One of the things I worry about the most is that we’ve created the tools that will help others close the Military gap we’ve been building for decades. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Anthropic Says Yemeni Cell Used Claude in Missile Development. And from Carl Zimmer in the NYT (Gift Article): A.I. Queries From Abroad Raise Fears of a Biological Weapons Race.