Pirate's Cove

You know, maybe there is a chance AI kills us. But, really, I think people are suddenly starting to lose their shit because they have been exposed heavily to all the doom and gloom originating from a few people and amplified by the Credentialed Media and a few politicians

Poll: Americans say there’s a serious risk of AI destroying humanity

A majority of Americans think artificial intelligence could someday destroy humanity.

The stunning new finding from The POLITICO Poll underscores the depth of people’s anxieties about the rapidly developing technology — and how quickly public sentiment around AI has hardened. Just a few months ago, AI was a nebulous concept for many Americans. Now, lawmakers in both parties are racing to understand how to control its growth.

Overall, about two out of three Americans say there is at least a “moderate” risk that advanced AI could destroy humanity, with majorities across parties, genders and age groups holding that view. Americans who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 are somewhat more likely to see such a risk (70%) than those who voted for President Donald Trump (60%).

That’s actually pretty wild, something that causes both parties to have the same beliefs.

Those fears have burst into public view in recent days after the leaders of the nation’s top AI labs — Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman — called with Elon Musk for slowing the pace of advanced AI development. The rare show of agreement from some of the industry’s fiercest competitors pushed long-simmering warnings about the technology’s dangers into the center of public debate.

And Americans appear inclined to take those warnings seriously.

Yeah, well, again, I think those slow down calls from the companies are really just methods to get government to limit up and coming companies while the big boys already have all their power and money, because, really, they can all voluntarily slow down, right? If people were so worried about AI going all Terminator they would have freaked several years ago when AI really started hitting the market. So, why now?

Money. That’s it. Well, control by the big companies already in charge, but, that also leads to money.

The poll results signal a growing political problem for the president as he has pushed back on increasingly urgent calls to slow AI development and emphasized the need for the United States to maintain its competitive edge over China. In a series of Truth Social posts on Monday, Trump dismissed the AI alarms as a “HOAX.”

Some of Americans’ concerns over the existential threat of AI may stem from their broader unease with the technology. Across a range of scenarios tested in the survey, majorities of respondents said they would be uncomfortable with AI being used in their everyday lives.

Most of these same people are already using AI. It’s not true AI, it’s just a f*ckton better at responding than previous. I’d actually be interested to see these types of polls performed in other countries, to see if the freakout occurs there, too.

Real Clear Politics is loaded with articles this morning, such as (below the fold)

Read More »

Read: Good Grief: 63% Say AI Could Kill Us All »

They can call it regulation, but, that’s just another word for control

Here’s The Nation, a very far left outlet

When you spot a cockroach, it’s very rarely an indication that you’re dealing with a single solitary little creature who has just happened to have journeyed to your nice apartment on a field trip. It’s far more likely to signal that you’ve got an infestation.

The AI world has been having something of a cockroach summer, at least when it comes to unsettling reports of AI behavior. The first nasty beastie poked its way into the sunlight in late July, when OpenAI reported that some of its AI agents had escaped the company’s control during a testing run and hacked the website of a tech company called Hugging Face. After that, the cockroaches kept coming. (blah blah blah)

Coxon’s admission has triggered a fresh round of demands in Washington to bring AI under a regulatory regime less likely to kill us all—an awkward fit for a Republican congressional majority that previously sought to outlaw all state and local efforts to rein in the industry. Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei worried in an online essay that an AI agent swarm “could be capable of taking over the entire internet” within a year, echoing widespread calls for a slowdown in AI development—though most of the solutions he proposed, like “embedded evaluators” in AI labs, would be voluntary ones, and he made only vague references to government regulation. Sources tell The Information that Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are talking about setting up an AI industry standards body.

Yet even without the threat of imminent AI takeover or outright apocalypse, there are ample reasons to dial back the runaway bid to cram AI into every sector of American life. Even those skeptical that so-called rogue AI agents are really only a few months away from taking over the world were able to suss out some of the less controversial implications of the attack. These observers noted that you don’t need AI agents to go rogue to cause a serious amount of damage: Malicious actors could direct a similar AI agent swarm to hack anything—from government websites to the Siemens PLCs that control our water filtration plants.

Government dictating it all sounds so benevolent, eh?

Niall Ferguson: AIpocalypse Now
It’s not just the next 9/11, enabled by AI, that is coming. It’s the next global financial crisis. It’s the next pandemic. It might even be the next world war. What, if anything, can we do about it?

Doom!

(Sean Davis) Understand what is happening with AI here and why it has more to do with amassing political power than it does computing power.

If you look back at the last 100 years in America, we have moved through 4 distinct eras of communication which each defined the types of politicians we elected.

The early 1900’s were still dominated by print, followed by radio, then broadcast television, followed by 24/7 cable news, and then the Internet and social media. (snip)

Dario and his AI buddies want to be the only ones in control. They hate open source, because that is a threat to their control. The solution? Cook up doomsday AI scenarios, demand regulation, and watch as the government enforces an AI cartel run entirely by Dario and his friends. That is exactly what we are witnessing right now. Except it’s not just about control of AI. It’s about using AI to control the world. That is what’s at stake right now.

Besides that all those big AI companies want to keep the smaller companies small, politicians want to control, because that’s what they do. Democrats love Government, and controlling AI gives them control of narratives. But, sadly, even good Republicans are falling for it

(HuffPost) Lawmakers are not exactly rushing to prevent tech companies from endangering humanity’s existence with rogue autonomous software, but recent warnings from industry insiders are prompting real debate, and potentially even action, sooner rather than later.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, has been working on a bill with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) on legislation to address the potentially “catastrophic risk” artificial intelligence poses. But at least one key Democrat fears the legislation won’t be strong enough, warning it could be used to block more meaningful action at the state level.

We definitely need to slow the roll on this.

Read: Politicians Are Increasingly Looking To Control AI »