In Reply to: AI developers saying AI could wipe out humans in posted by Bruinfan4ever on September 14, 2026 at 04:47:55
cliff tomorrow or that today's AI is capable of exterminating life on earth. We're not there in any way.
It is possible that at this point, AI that breaks containment can cause a lot of glitches that can hurt a small group of people in serious ways and can do that in a serial fashion, but I don't think we're plugged in enough or the AI is sophisticated enough to bring on a massive catastrophe yet.
And that "yet" is my concern. This is exactly the point where some failsafes need to be placed on what AIs can access, how they can be contained and which cables need to be unplugged. Also develop an architecture that compartmentalizes the network in meaningful ways.
These are not things that these companies will have any interest in developing. I partially agree with confused that there is likely a more cynical motivation for all these alarms going off in the industry (although, to be fair, we don't really know the current state of AI that is being developed as we speak, so I'm understandably speaking a few steps behind when it comes to what's on the table).
Also, let's not lose sight of the fact that the real danger of AI at this moment is not that they can wipe out all humans in the next 10 years, but what it is being used for as we keep talking about what it can do in the future, It's being used in an ongoing genocide, it's being used as a tool for subverting elections, it is being used as a way to sort out all the information being gathered on us for predictive policing, I'm sure, etc etc.
The first thing we can do at this point is to consolidate the organically developed reaction to data centers, which are the steroid these AIs consume in massive amounts, It's also their Achilles' heel. So there is an actual political issue here, and I will deliberately bring the discussion back to the Democratic Party: what is the party's position on data centers and how the AI industry can be regulated? This is a concern that unites Americans. Don't let another winning issue get taken over and owned by MAGA!