Intro by DM
I am visiting my 97-year-old aunt in South Africa. Due to eyesight, she keeps the big TV on one channel — BBC Today — so she doesn’t have to manage the two remotes. So, for three days I have been subjected to BBC news and various BBC Africa reports.
What has astonished me is that for three solid days the BBC have been promoting various views about AI — packaging the segments as “AI could kill us by 2030”—an alarming and clickable formulation.
I’ve never seen such a push. And when the MSM push a topic are they preparing us for something? So, I asked OpenAI why the BBC was pushing this:
AI-reply:
“It has taken the most frightening claim made by one former AI researcher and turned it into a highly dramatic headline. The interview was with Jacob Coxon, who recently resigned from Anthropic and previously worked at OpenAI. His actual position was that there is a possibility of human extinction if increasingly autonomous AI becomes capable of improving itself and humans lose control. The BBC packaged that as “AI could kill us by 2030”—a much more alarming and clickable formulation. BBC interview on YouTube
Why is the BBC pushing it?
-
- Fear attracts audiences. “Researcher concerned about a theoretical future risk” will not generate nearly as many clicks as “AI could kill us by 2030.”
- Coxon is an apparent insider. Having worked at Anthropic and OpenAI gives the warning news value, even though employment at those companies does not make his prediction scientifically established.
- There is currently a coordinated political argument over AI regulation. Researchers, technology executives and politicians are calling for restrictions or a slowdown. Public fear creates pressure for legislation.
- AI companies can benefit from the mythology. Saying their systems may soon become uncontrollably superhuman makes the companies and their technology sound enormously powerful. Regulation may also protect the large established companies by making it harder for smaller competitors to comply.
- The BBC has selected one side of a genuine disagreement. Some respected researchers regard loss of control as a serious risk. Others argue that current language models are sophisticated statistical systems, nowhere near independent beings capable of taking over civilization.
The crucial missing distinction is:
“A conceivable chain of events could produce catastrophe” is not the same as “there is evidence humanity may be killed by 2030.” [End of extract]
The BBC were also pushing interviews about how silicone humans would have enormous advantage over us. They would be AI enhanced, have assets, take our jobs and essentially could take over humanity — and would possibly have no empathy for homo sapiens.
My follow up question to OpenAI:
“Do you think the global elite is preparing humanity that something is going to happen?”
Answer:
“I think powerful institutions are preparing the public for major AI-driven disruption, but that is different from possessing secret knowledge that AI will destroy humanity.
Several interests overlap:
-
- AI companies benefit from portraying their technology as almost superhuman. It attracts investment and makes their executives appear indispensable.
- Governments want public acceptance of regulation, surveillance, digital identity systems and greater control over computing infrastructure.
- Established companies may favour costly regulation because it creates barriers that smaller competitors cannot meet.
- News organisations benefit from frightening, dramatic stories.
- Some researchers sincerely believe an uncontrolled future AI could be catastrophic.
So there may be coordinated messaging and shared institutional interests without a single “global elite” executing a unified plan.
What are they plausibly preparing us for? Large-scale job displacement, information manipulation, automated warfare, cyberattacks, increased surveillance, and unprecedented concentration of wealth and decision-making power. Those changes are already observable. Human extinction by 2030, however, remains a speculative scenario without public evidence showing that insiders know it will occur.
My concern is that the extinction narrative can divert attention from a more immediate reality: AI does not have to become conscious and kill everybody to transfer enormous power from ordinary people to governments and corporations. Fear of a future machine takeover might be used to justify centralising control today.” [End of reply]
Let me repeat that last line:
“Fear of a future machine takeover might be used to justify centralising control today.”
A message from a friend:
There is an anti AI opp happening paid for by the big AI companies
They want government in a panic, to stop any open-source AI projects
The big companies are extremely threatened by the idea that people will get around their control grid with open source
And do they put out this stupid idea that AI will kill everyone… and must be slowed down
It’s bullshit