Good Grief: 63% Say AI Could Kill Us All

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)

Slow down the race to regulate AI

…

Before FTX collapsed, Sam Bankman-Fried became one of Washington’s most enthusiastic cryptocurrency regulation advocates. He pushed legislation that would have placed much of the industry under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an agency widely regarded by crypto firms as friendlier than the Securities and Exchange Commission. Regulation would have given crypto greater legitimacy while creating rules that a large, centralized exchange such as FTX would be well-positioned to navigate.

Mark Zuckerberg did something similar after Facebook endured years of controversy over privacy, political advertising, and content moderation. In 2019, he explicitly called for the government to play “a more active role” in regulating the internet, including rules covering harmful content, election integrity, privacy, and data portability. Such legislation would have replaced some of the legal uncertainty surrounding Facebook with government-written standards that a company of Meta’s size was well equipped to meet, while potentially limiting the company’s exposure to future lawsuits.

Health insurers provide an even clearer example. During the debate that produced the Affordable Care Act, the insurance industry agreed to accept customers with preexisting conditions in exchange for an individual mandate requiring Americans to buy insurance. Aetna CEO Ron Williams was among the industry leaders promoting reform. The eventual law did not merely regulate insurers; it required millions of Americans to become their customers and subsidized coverage for many of them with taxpayer dollars.

There’s a lot more in that Washington Examiner piece, but, yes, the central focus is on the money. How’s that whole push for health insurance worked out? Established companies making a fortune while premiums, deductibles, and actual care costs exploding.

The AI frontier can pace itself

If the founders of frontier artificial intelligence labs fear they’re in danger of losing control of their own inventions, then they should slow down the pace of AI development. These executives don’t need the federal government’s permission or direction to do so. (snip)

Amodei’s proposal has the unmistakable whiff of rent-seeking. As a first step, he announced Anthropic would provide “employee-like” access for outside evaluators to verify its safety practices. Then, once a “critical mass” of his competitors follow suit, he suggested the U.S. government should make these evaluations mandatory for all firms near the frontier.

And that is the uber-lefty Washington Post editorial board saying “yo, it’s about the money staying in the hands of the big companies”.