Podcast: Sunset
Sep 29, 2026 · 6 min · 6 segments
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aistop.watch
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Sep 29, 2026 · 6 min · 6 segments
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aistop.watch
This site will reboot tomorrow in stripped-down form.
When we started AI Stopwatch back in April, I described the rationale in our welcome email.
When the growing resentments around AI burst into demands for sweeping action, will voters and their representatives know to insist, among their other demands, on preventing the development of superhuman minds that no one knows how to steer or control? They will if you and I and our friends and their friends have all told them.
End quote.
But five months into our experiment, three weeks after Jacob Coxon wrote the resignation tweet heard round the world, a lack of awareness is no longer my chief concern.
The extinction problem is now so salient in public discourse that it may have actually triggered the avalanche, that surge of demand for action that I always felt was coming.
Even a month ago, I thought the avalanche was further away, because the problems I expected to most motivate it, like job loss, still weren't very acute.
But Coxon, and those in the industry who immediately and vocally seconded his concerns, successfully and correctly flagged the extinction threat as near-term, something that could play out before those other issues would have a chance to inflict too much misery.
A recent poll shows voters are now substantially more worried about AI becoming too powerful and taking control than they are about job loss.
My new preoccupation is with the momentum and concentration of the avalanche.
With the question of whether the policy response at the bottom will be strong enough and soon enough.
Business interests and their political thralls have gone into overdrive trying to laugh off the extinction problem using every rhetorical trick and cynical ploy they can come up with.
Everything short of making reasoned arguments for why superhuman AIs from the companies that brought us the swarms that hacked the world this summer wouldn't end up in control of our planet.
The U.S. president is saying he wants to leave AI policy, quote-unquote, where it is.
And congressional leaders seem determined to punt on it until next year at the earliest.
So my concern is now less that the public won't demand action, and more that the people responsible for taking that action won't actually do it.
That they'll wait months for more AI scandals to accumulate, then congratulate themselves for superficial action that doesn't even try to stop the death race.
I want more of Miri's resources devoted to that problem, which is playing out more in the halls of power and on the elite's favorite media channels than in the court of public opinion that AI Stopwatch was built to play in.
To this end, with support from my higher-ups, I have decided to sunset AI Stopwatch as currently constructed.
This site will reboot tomorrow in stripped-down form.
When we started AI Stopwatch back in April, I described the rationale in our welcome email.
When the growing resentments around AI burst into demands for sweeping action, will voters and their representatives know to insist, among their other demands, on preventing the development of superhuman minds that no one knows how to steer or control? They will if you and I and our friends and their friends have all told them.
End quote.
But five months into our experiment, three weeks after Jacob Coxon wrote the resignation tweet heard round the world, a lack of awareness is no longer my chief concern.
The extinction problem is now so salient in public discourse that it may have actually triggered the avalanche, that surge of demand for action that I always felt was coming.
Even a month ago, I thought the avalanche was further away, because the problems I expected to most motivate it, like job loss, still weren't very acute.
But Coxon, and those in the industry who immediately and vocally seconded his concerns, successfully and correctly flagged the extinction threat as near-term, something that could play out before those other issues would have a chance to inflict too much misery.
A recent poll shows voters are now substantially more worried about AI becoming too powerful and taking control than they are about job loss.
My new preoccupation is with the momentum and concentration of the avalanche.
With the question of whether the policy response at the bottom will be strong enough and soon enough.
Business interests and their political thralls have gone into overdrive trying to laugh off the extinction problem using every rhetorical trick and cynical ploy they can come up with.
Everything short of making reasoned arguments for why superhuman AIs from the companies that brought us the swarms that hacked the world this summer wouldn't end up in control of our planet.
The U.S. president is saying he wants to leave AI policy, quote-unquote, where it is.
And congressional leaders seem determined to punt on it until next year at the earliest.
So my concern is now less that the public won't demand action, and more that the people responsible for taking that action won't actually do it.
That they'll wait months for more AI scandals to accumulate, then congratulate themselves for superficial action that doesn't even try to stop the death race.
I want more of Miri's resources devoted to that problem, which is playing out more in the halls of power and on the elite's favorite media channels than in the court of public opinion that AI Stopwatch was built to play in.
To this end, with support from my higher-ups, I have decided to sunset AI Stopwatch as currently constructed.
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