Happy Sunday friends:
In my last article I explained why AI is not going to kill us, but could cause an economic disaster because the people running chatbot companies are amoral cultic conmen.
Since then, the purpose of the systematically apocalyptic freakout over AI has been made crystal clear by the CEOs of these companies. Dario Amodei of Anthropic has been on a whirlwind tour warning that his technology is too powerful to control and “swarms” could take over the internet if they don’t “slow the pace” and get the government involved.
To be clear, this is bullshit.
Amodei published an article “We Must Pace the Frontier” which has the tell:
“For antitrust reasons, it’s helpful for the US government to mediate or at least enable these discussions — they don’t need to participate, but do need to issue a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations.”
Sam Altman and Elon Musk have both jumped on this bandwagon, and the reason is transparent. Their companies are financial disasters which do not support the multi-trillion dollar valuations their investors expect. Chinese AI labs and open-weight models provide effectively the same performance for a small fraction of American frontier labs.
They need regulatory capture and a government backstop.
I wrote a brief parable to explain this influence operation.
Imagine you’re a conman. You’ve said for years you have MAGIC BEANS. To prove it, you’ve shown lots of REALLY BIG normal beans that you made in your lab.
“Almost there!” you say—over and over.
Now, you have almost convinced the villagers to give you TWO TRILLION DOLLARS.
But while the beans keep getting bigger, there is no magic yet…
What do you do? That money is SO CLOSE.
“I know!” you think, “instead of MAGIC beans, lets’s make them KILLER BEANS.”
So you pump up the beans SUPER BIG and you say: “I’m sorry, but these BEANS ARE GETTING BIGGER ON THEIR OWN!” You threaten the village that if they don’t give you the money, the beans may get into the WRONG HANDS. They might get BIGGER THAN THE EARTH!
The villagers, aghast, run to and fro arguing whether the beans are going to kill everyone or make them all rich.
“Well, either way,” the idiots in the village conclude, “we’d better give him the money.”
Should AI be regulated? Yes. Is AI unsafe if used maliciously? Of course.
But regulation is not what they really want. They want a bailout—from us.
Please join me and our thriving community today at Noon PT / 3PM ET to discuss the imminent chatbot apocalypse, the latest events in the Middle East, and anything else on your mind. It’s always open to questions and comments. Hope to see you there! Details below.