The sheer level to which AI has been pushed out is so jarring. Makes sense it’s exacerbating already-existing threats. It scares me on many levels & a large chunk of society’s quick acceptance of it has me feeling whacko
The conclusion that an AI apocalypse is unlikely may be right (I hope it is!), but the source is dubious. US so-called intelligence services have been notoriously inaccurate in their assessment of real--as opposed to imaginary--threats. From their assurances that the Chinese weren't going to enter the Korean war, to their failure to anticipate Saudi pilot trainees' intentions when they told their instructors they didn't need how to learn to land, and onward, these services have been much better at disrupting foreign governments than they have at detecting and assessing actual danger.
Appreciate this sober take so much, thank you! I am nonetheless a little miffed to find myself agreeing with the intelligence agencies. I guess in a sense, you could see them as being disrupted by this kind of tech and reluctant to acknowledge its potential impact but it's just plain clear that none of the worst case scenarios happen without the very human decision to allow proliferation without regulation. That is a political choice, not a technological inevitability.
Hear me out; I've been reading Ed Zitron for a while now and no - these guys DO NOT have "AGI" yet, but I think I know what's going on. First off, yes this "AI" stuff *can* be dangerous if turned loose on certain systems and irresponsibly developed/deployed, but I think there's something much more sneaky going on.
1) Just for example, both Anthropic and OpenAI are rushing to go public (announce an IPO). They are both in debt up to their ears (in slightly different ways) and neither of them are profitable - All these "AI" companies and Nvidia are engaged in a massive circular financial con game (aka a circle jerk). So when I see an engineer at one of these firms *VERY* publicly resign for alleged humanitarian reasons like "AI will kill all humanity!" that might hurt his firm's bottom line or appear to risk an IPO, only to be immediately, publicly and counterintuitively backed up by a higher up who still works there, I begin to smell a rat. Just look at the level of attention (likes, clicks, shares, mentions) that this announcement and the followup Twee got.
I think it's a publicity IPO-pumping campaign. Think about it: What messaging could possibly be better to would-be investors wanting to get rich quick than "Our AI is SOOO POWERFUL that it might even be able to end humanity (or cure cancer) you should be very worried (or hopeful)!"
Count on the corporate media (made up of the same investor class) to gladly amplify and disseminate the message. And the fact that now they're going to "delay" the IPO that they were going to have a hell of a time actually doing any time soon (and again the corporate MSM is dutifully trumpeting from the hills), is just further confirmation to me. The only thing better than a good pre-IPO ad campaign is "negative" publicity saying that you're offering investors the chance to get in cheap on an awsome new technology powerful enough to destroy human existence (unless something is done SOON!).
-and/or-
2) They really are pretty worried in advance of their big IPOs (which to be clear will not only wipe out trillions in mutual debt, but create dozens of new billionaires overnight) and realize that some of their toys do in fact have the potential to wreck stuff pretty good. Things like turn off massive water treatment plants, shut down electrical grids, let some kid build a bomb or engineer a new deadly virus, corrupt massive healthcare database systems, etc. - and they're worried about getting sued out of all their newfound riches. So this will lead to some sort of regulation or other mechanism to shield them from liability once they've cashed in. "We're warning you! Our super duper new civilization altering creation might be dangerous if not properly dealt with. This is your chance to set up guard rails and get in on the investment!"
My two cents, anyway. And again, none of these guys has demontrated a true "AGI" - If they had one they'd have been telling us, trust me.
We love hyperbole almost as much as we love sweating the always imminent apocalypse. It's all AI to me - the WW2 Turing machine, the 1968 Texas Instruments (which still out-calculates most humans), the PC with its ever faster processing speeds, smart phones... seems like just more of the same to my computer-iliterate ass. Can we be killed by a glitching machine? I suppose we could, but if we made the glitchy machine and attached it to our biggest death-bringers, it's still just us killing ourselves with incompetence, not the Rise of the Machines-style extermination of the human race.
The use of "entropy" in the Rand report is intentional BS; what they really mean is "increase in variance of possible outcome." They are saying, "we don't know," but wrapping it in faux scientific rigor since AI is the least legible risk event in their "analysis;" the McKinsey-esque chart says it all. Nevertheless, what is needed is regulation of the powerful people who stand to benefit from AI, and we all know with great certainty what that outcome will be — just read the GENIUS Act to get a sense for what the US Senate can do for the Donor Class.
He writes REALLY long entries, but trust me - he's one of the few people (like Hal Marcus) actually telling the truth about this "AI" stuff. I hadn't read this before I made the longer comment below. Too bad Substack doesn't have any text formatting. Everything below this is an excerpt from Zitron's article....I recommend reading the whole thing for an excellent understanding of the massive bubble/con these firms are engaged in.
"Late last week, everything exploded when former Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon, in an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal, warned that he was “quitting the AI industry” (he wasn’t) over “...fears that the lab and its competitors are racing to build systems they won’t be able to control.”
His fears were centered around the creation of “recursive self-improvement,” a still-theoretical concept of AI that trains itself autonomously” and otherwise expressing few specific concerns beyond that “AI labs are unable to control AI,” always phrasing things in the terms of impossible-to-control entities rather than poorly-programmed cloud software running on the infrastructure of the largest companies in the world.
[...typical quote from one of the many articles about the resignation...]
This is because, in my opinion, Jacob does not really care about the actual harms of AI, whether we’re talking about Large Language Models or something he imagined while working with the non-profit or PR firm that set up a CBS interview where he claimed that AI that, if we’re talking about LLMs, have model weights of terabytes of memory, would make ten thousand copies of themselves.
Or, of course, bullshit like this:
"It doesn't look that different from, say, 'Terminator' or from science fiction films," Coxon told CBS News Thursday. "It will be smart enough to kill us."
At no point did Coxon bring up how ChatGPT was used as a “suicide coach,” directly caused a murder-suicide, or aided and abetted in mass shootings in Florida and Canada, or the horrifying gas turbines poisoning black communities. His own discussion of the Hugging Face attack — much like all of his criticisms — focuses on the anthropomorphization of large language models as this unknowable, unstoppable force, with no real responsibility for anyone involved.
This is a repetition of what we saw back in February when Matt Shumer’s abominable “Something Big Is Happening” essay spread like wildfire to every imaginable news outlet despite it being somewhere between nonsensical and utterly fictional, except this time the narrative got a little out of hand. While Coxon’s warnings are specious and, in many cases, not really about anything other than him saying “yeah I heard a lot of my colleagues say stuff like that,” but nevertheless have had the effect of making a lot of people really scared of AI, even if AI can’t really do the things he’s talking about."
What the intelligence community is ignoring is the internal threat of job theft by AI that will further decimate the middle class leaving a nation of have-nots with only a few haves.
A possible silver lining is that the newly formed "have-nots" might become a recruiting ground for labor movements as radical movements strengthen when economic changes destabilize those that previously considered their material economic conditions as solid. Middle class people who previously saw themselves outside the working class start to see themselves differently. Perhaps this new economic reality could boost membership options for unions, cooperatives, public ownership and in my view, beneficial socialist politics. We are already seeing across party lines, in Red/rural states, a disdain for the AI data centers and their wealthy owners. Instead of Trump style populism blaming migrants or DEI for their own exploitation, people might (finally) begin to identify who their class enemies really are?
Well climate change is ALREADY killing humans, yet the media doesn't seem too interested in that
The sheer level to which AI has been pushed out is so jarring. Makes sense it’s exacerbating already-existing threats. It scares me on many levels & a large chunk of society’s quick acceptance of it has me feeling whacko
The conclusion that an AI apocalypse is unlikely may be right (I hope it is!), but the source is dubious. US so-called intelligence services have been notoriously inaccurate in their assessment of real--as opposed to imaginary--threats. From their assurances that the Chinese weren't going to enter the Korean war, to their failure to anticipate Saudi pilot trainees' intentions when they told their instructors they didn't need how to learn to land, and onward, these services have been much better at disrupting foreign governments than they have at detecting and assessing actual danger.
Excellent work of much needed skepticism.
This makes me feel a bit better. Thanks, Ken.
I’m listening to BP now, stressed out.
Appreciate this sober take so much, thank you! I am nonetheless a little miffed to find myself agreeing with the intelligence agencies. I guess in a sense, you could see them as being disrupted by this kind of tech and reluctant to acknowledge its potential impact but it's just plain clear that none of the worst case scenarios happen without the very human decision to allow proliferation without regulation. That is a political choice, not a technological inevitability.
Thank you for the thoughtful piece that made me think differently about this issue
Hear me out; I've been reading Ed Zitron for a while now and no - these guys DO NOT have "AGI" yet, but I think I know what's going on. First off, yes this "AI" stuff *can* be dangerous if turned loose on certain systems and irresponsibly developed/deployed, but I think there's something much more sneaky going on.
1) Just for example, both Anthropic and OpenAI are rushing to go public (announce an IPO). They are both in debt up to their ears (in slightly different ways) and neither of them are profitable - All these "AI" companies and Nvidia are engaged in a massive circular financial con game (aka a circle jerk). So when I see an engineer at one of these firms *VERY* publicly resign for alleged humanitarian reasons like "AI will kill all humanity!" that might hurt his firm's bottom line or appear to risk an IPO, only to be immediately, publicly and counterintuitively backed up by a higher up who still works there, I begin to smell a rat. Just look at the level of attention (likes, clicks, shares, mentions) that this announcement and the followup Twee got.
I think it's a publicity IPO-pumping campaign. Think about it: What messaging could possibly be better to would-be investors wanting to get rich quick than "Our AI is SOOO POWERFUL that it might even be able to end humanity (or cure cancer) you should be very worried (or hopeful)!"
Count on the corporate media (made up of the same investor class) to gladly amplify and disseminate the message. And the fact that now they're going to "delay" the IPO that they were going to have a hell of a time actually doing any time soon (and again the corporate MSM is dutifully trumpeting from the hills), is just further confirmation to me. The only thing better than a good pre-IPO ad campaign is "negative" publicity saying that you're offering investors the chance to get in cheap on an awsome new technology powerful enough to destroy human existence (unless something is done SOON!).
-and/or-
2) They really are pretty worried in advance of their big IPOs (which to be clear will not only wipe out trillions in mutual debt, but create dozens of new billionaires overnight) and realize that some of their toys do in fact have the potential to wreck stuff pretty good. Things like turn off massive water treatment plants, shut down electrical grids, let some kid build a bomb or engineer a new deadly virus, corrupt massive healthcare database systems, etc. - and they're worried about getting sued out of all their newfound riches. So this will lead to some sort of regulation or other mechanism to shield them from liability once they've cashed in. "We're warning you! Our super duper new civilization altering creation might be dangerous if not properly dealt with. This is your chance to set up guard rails and get in on the investment!"
My two cents, anyway. And again, none of these guys has demontrated a true "AGI" - If they had one they'd have been telling us, trust me.
More on this. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/09/openai-anthropic-ai-freeze-doomers-trump-bannon-sanders.html
Wow. I can always count on you to add an insight that causes me to pause, research and think.
What a gift, skill (whatever the word should be) you have.
Love this! I appreciate you and your fact based, pragmatic coverage.
Thanks Laura !
We love hyperbole almost as much as we love sweating the always imminent apocalypse. It's all AI to me - the WW2 Turing machine, the 1968 Texas Instruments (which still out-calculates most humans), the PC with its ever faster processing speeds, smart phones... seems like just more of the same to my computer-iliterate ass. Can we be killed by a glitching machine? I suppose we could, but if we made the glitchy machine and attached it to our biggest death-bringers, it's still just us killing ourselves with incompetence, not the Rise of the Machines-style extermination of the human race.
The use of "entropy" in the Rand report is intentional BS; what they really mean is "increase in variance of possible outcome." They are saying, "we don't know," but wrapping it in faux scientific rigor since AI is the least legible risk event in their "analysis;" the McKinsey-esque chart says it all. Nevertheless, what is needed is regulation of the powerful people who stand to benefit from AI, and we all know with great certainty what that outcome will be — just read the GENIUS Act to get a sense for what the US Senate can do for the Donor Class.
Good stuff Ken BUT I am still fearful.
When you said f*ck 911, I was so mad. But now, I hope the large asteroid gets us before this stroke I have thinking about AI.
You're great! Keep up the good word. My bank account is connected to yours.
Were you really mad about the 911 post ? Can’t tell if joking
Absolutely not. We share the same sentiment.
Ed has a good piece that dovetails with Ken's subject.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-already-in-dangerous-hands/
He writes REALLY long entries, but trust me - he's one of the few people (like Hal Marcus) actually telling the truth about this "AI" stuff. I hadn't read this before I made the longer comment below. Too bad Substack doesn't have any text formatting. Everything below this is an excerpt from Zitron's article....I recommend reading the whole thing for an excellent understanding of the massive bubble/con these firms are engaged in.
"Late last week, everything exploded when former Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon, in an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal, warned that he was “quitting the AI industry” (he wasn’t) over “...fears that the lab and its competitors are racing to build systems they won’t be able to control.”
His fears were centered around the creation of “recursive self-improvement,” a still-theoretical concept of AI that trains itself autonomously” and otherwise expressing few specific concerns beyond that “AI labs are unable to control AI,” always phrasing things in the terms of impossible-to-control entities rather than poorly-programmed cloud software running on the infrastructure of the largest companies in the world.
[...typical quote from one of the many articles about the resignation...]
This is because, in my opinion, Jacob does not really care about the actual harms of AI, whether we’re talking about Large Language Models or something he imagined while working with the non-profit or PR firm that set up a CBS interview where he claimed that AI that, if we’re talking about LLMs, have model weights of terabytes of memory, would make ten thousand copies of themselves.
Or, of course, bullshit like this:
"It doesn't look that different from, say, 'Terminator' or from science fiction films," Coxon told CBS News Thursday. "It will be smart enough to kill us."
At no point did Coxon bring up how ChatGPT was used as a “suicide coach,” directly caused a murder-suicide, or aided and abetted in mass shootings in Florida and Canada, or the horrifying gas turbines poisoning black communities. His own discussion of the Hugging Face attack — much like all of his criticisms — focuses on the anthropomorphization of large language models as this unknowable, unstoppable force, with no real responsibility for anyone involved.
This is a repetition of what we saw back in February when Matt Shumer’s abominable “Something Big Is Happening” essay spread like wildfire to every imaginable news outlet despite it being somewhere between nonsensical and utterly fictional, except this time the narrative got a little out of hand. While Coxon’s warnings are specious and, in many cases, not really about anything other than him saying “yeah I heard a lot of my colleagues say stuff like that,” but nevertheless have had the effect of making a lot of people really scared of AI, even if AI can’t really do the things he’s talking about."
What the intelligence community is ignoring is the internal threat of job theft by AI that will further decimate the middle class leaving a nation of have-nots with only a few haves.
A possible silver lining is that the newly formed "have-nots" might become a recruiting ground for labor movements as radical movements strengthen when economic changes destabilize those that previously considered their material economic conditions as solid. Middle class people who previously saw themselves outside the working class start to see themselves differently. Perhaps this new economic reality could boost membership options for unions, cooperatives, public ownership and in my view, beneficial socialist politics. We are already seeing across party lines, in Red/rural states, a disdain for the AI data centers and their wealthy owners. Instead of Trump style populism blaming migrants or DEI for their own exploitation, people might (finally) begin to identify who their class enemies really are?