Democrats Go On A Scaremongering AI Rampage

Let me note again that today’s AI isn’t truly intelligent. It’s not even close to having, let’s say, sentience. So, what’s up with all the fearporn from Democrats?

Does Champ not realize that he could call on Congress to do this? That if Trump demanded Congress convene that Democrats would call him a dictator?

Warner has been rage tweeted. And Ted Lieu. And NY Senator Lisa Blunt. And Rep Yassamin Ansar. And many, many, many more. It’s almost like this was coordinated by Democrats

And Josh, too. Hey, can we take a look at their stock portfolios? Oh, and of some Republicans, too?

Yeah, some Republicans are being hysterics, too

AI Firms’ Self-Serving Warnings

OpenAI and Anthropic will soon have to explain to investors why they are each supposedly worth $2–3 trillion. They will probably draw from the same template that Elon Musk used for the SpaceX IPO in June. By presenting a modestly profitable satellite-launch and telecoms business attached to a tremendously unprofitable AI startup as a vehicle for “mak[ing] humanity multiplanetary,” Musk achieved a valuation far above what the company’s financials justify.

With private markets showing signs of exhaustion, OpenAI and Anthropic’s expected IPOs promise access to a much larger pool of capital. Going public opens not only the equity markets but also the vastly deeper investment-grade debt market, and bankers for OpenAI and Anthropic are already pressing rating agencies to grant them investment-grade marks after their listings. But that means their pitch to investors must do double duty, giving shareholders a market vast enough to justify today’s valuation while convincing creditors that today’s cash burn can be contained.

If AI is so damned dangerous and needs to be reigned in and regulated by Congress then why would these same companies be going public and looking for a ton of money?

With these needs in mind, the frontier labs are relying on two narratives that promise a path to profitability. They claim that AI will not only replace workers and expand the potential market from software budgets to labor-saving applications, but also that the existential risk associated with the technology justifies curtailing additional capital spending.

So, maybe all the doomy warnings are BS to gain better money?

Yet in preparing for their IPOs, the labs have found a financial use case for these longstanding warnings about AI. Fears of mass joblessness or human extinction offer them a good reason to restrain spending without conceding that further improvements might prove uneconomical. The timing of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to “pace the frontier,” which was immediately endorsed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Musk, is telling. After all, these same companies long rebuffed demands for a “pause” in training frontier models.

There’s that old saying “if you have to ask why, the answer is $$$”.

Who’s afraid of AI?

It’s not often that we get a ringside seat to the Birth of a Narrative. Usually, those overseeing the parturition are careful to manage the event offstage, away from the prying eyes of skeptics, spoilsports, and counternarrativists. There are walls of silence and moats of obfuscation to accompany the rollout. That helps keep everyone on message. There are media firemen assembled to extinguish the flames and wash away the reputations of questioners. That helps neutralize pests and quash doubts.

But with the sudden onslaught of the “AI will end humanity” narrative, the impresarios orchestrating the debut got sloppy. They knew their own lines. Artificial intelligence was the biggest threat to humanity since, well, since ever. Forget Covid, forget climate catastrophe, forget the population explosion or collapse. AI was it, the real McCoy, the cliff, the secret signal calling forth all the Chickens Little throughout the land. Right on cue, Bernie Sanders threatened legislation to bankrupt companies and cast anyone pursuing “superintelligence” into prison for 20 years. Some innocent bystanders wondered whether by “superintelligence” the Senator meant anyone more intelligent than he.

Roger Kimball makes a good point in the much longer article (de-paywalled here). Don’t expect the doom to stop anytime soon, though, if it’s anything like the climate cult. Expect the push to start including government control on your life, not just AI, though, this will be a bit harder because of the subject and that many Republicans are getting hysterical over the issue.

And, quite frankly, the more I see of this scaremongering the less concerned I am about it.