What’s really behind AI ‘super intelligence’

We could lose control of the future to AI.

The risk is that it moves so fast that people can no longer follow what's happening or intervene when needed.

This would obviously be terrible.

The industry must not accept too much technological risk just because the benefits are too great and that they feel too important to slow down.

Funny because Altman has very famously made the first call before, in the halls of the U.S. Congress no less, only to disavow regulations when they weren't to his liking.

and also because OpenAI is, as we speak, pouring millions of dollars into lobbying campaigns directly aimed at quashing real democratic input.

OpenAI and its executives have donated millions of dollars to Leading the Future, a PAC that is currently working to dismantle democratic laws and oversight of the technology.

Anthropix's Dario Amode, meanwhile, underlined how powerful his company's products were and called, again, for regulation of the industry.

AI is advancing very quickly.

Four years ago, it could barely write a line of code or solve a high school math problem.

Today, it writes most of the coded anthropic and solves world-famous unsolved math problems.

The trajectory only needs to continue for a tiny period longer, one or two years, maybe less, to reach what I've called a country of geniuses in the data center.

This rapid pace of progress will produce incredible benefit for the world.

Now, at first blush, this might seem like a good thing, right? These titans of industry are taking concerns with their products seriously and calling for governments to help rein them in.

Hardly.

What they're really doing with this AI extinction narrative is three things.

Number one, they are inflating the importance and value of their products.

In a tendency now widely recognized as doom marketing, AI companies have been able to win headlines and state buy-in by making their commercial products sound as frightening as possible.

Now, note that this does not mean that there is absolutely no there there.

There are real concerns with the kind of automated hacking and disruptions to technical infrastructure it abets.

There are.

But most of these issues could be solved by promising to crack down on the companies when they, you know, break the law.

Number two, the AI executives are attempting to dictate any forthcoming policy interventions squarely on their own terms.

They are asking for things like audits from tech companies staffed by former employees and people friendly to them.

They are asking for voluntary frameworks and low-hanging fruit like bans on using their technology to make biological weapons.