I’ve been holding a long-running conversation with a friend in the Bay Area. He was previously active in tech, but recently retired. He is not as concerned about AI as I am, and when I point out the terrible threats posed by AI, he always offers an interesting counterpoint. For example:
I tell him “Even the people who are creating AI are telling us it’s terrible threat.”
His response: “A small number are saying that. Many more are not.”
I tell him: “Even the leaders of the AI companies are asking for government regulations. They are begging for it!”
His response: “Everybody knows that the stock market has been going up for only one reason: we are in an AI boom. It’s a bubble, just like the Internet bubble more than twenty years ago. I think the leaders of the AI companies have found that the technology will never deliver what they promised - and when that becomes clear, the bubble will burst and they will be blamed for over-promising AI. What they are doing now is asking the government to step in and throttle them a little bit. That way they won’t be blamed if their AIs are disappointing - they can always point to government limitations.”
And of course, he always points out “Even if we limit our AI, China won’t.” I don’t have a good response for that, as I do not trust the Chinese government to limit their own technological progress.