Why the panic is fake
Every time a new “emerging” technology shakes up the world, people lose their minds; Today it’s AI’s turn…
- Did we slow down car production when we realized exhaust emissions were poisoning city air for decades? No, we kept building more cars and dealt with catalytic converters only after the smog got impossible to ignore.
- Did we slow down social media platforms once the mental health data on teenagers started piling up? No, the algorithms got more addictive, not less. The internet + social media ruined how we used to talk to each other, forever!
- Did we slow down cryptocurrency mining once its energy consumption started rivaling small countries? No, more mining farms got built, not fewer.
- Did we slow down cigarette production when the link to deadly cancer became undeniable? No, we slapped a warning label on the box and kept selling billions of packs a year.
- Did we slow down seed oil production when the inflammation and metabolic damage started piling up in the research? No, it’s in almost every processed food on the shelf right now.
- Did we slow down leaded gasoline once we knew lead was frying children’s brains? We kept pumping it for decades after the danger was documented, because pulling it out was expensive.
- Did we slow down sugar once the science linked it to obesity and heart disease? No, the sugar industry paid to shift the blame onto fat instead, and we’re still eating it by the pound…
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Did we slow down any of that? Did anyone pause the internet for six months because humanity was not ready? Of course not! Now, all these big frontier “AI leaders” are suddenly crying wolf? They claim AI is moving too fast for safety and warn that recursive self-improvement will outrun human control. They say we need to slow down capability growth to buy a year or two for oversight. It sounds like abstract nonsense to me. Once a wise man said: “you don’t stop building the highway just because drivers don’t know how to steer!”
The “Engineering” excuse
Let’s be honest about what is really happening here. Can you believe that these AI developers are shockingly naive about the basics of computer security? I can’t lean toward that idea because they have all the resources to fix it if they cared. Something else is going on.
So sill, instead of fixing basic security flaws, they pivot to existential risk. It is a neat trick. It distracts everyone from the fact that their foundational security is broken while shifting the blame to abstract sci-fi monster scenarios.
“Worrying about AI taking over the universe while your API leaks user data is like crying about a doubtful meteor strike while your house is actively on fire ☺”
If the foundation was never built properly, that is not evidence that AI itself is too dangerous to keep developing. It is evidence that the people building it did the job wrong from day one and now want the rest of us to believe that stopping the entire industry is the responsible move rather than simply going back and doing the security work they should have done from the start.
Follow the real incentives
So why the sudden chorus of tech CEOs agreeing we need a pause? Look past the PR statements and the political theater. The motives are so very transparent to me:
- Slowing down conveniently blocks smaller and open-source labs from catching up to the leaders calling for the pause…aka “market protection.”
- Regulatory frameworks built around safety oversight tend to lock in the biggest players and lock out everyone else. I got what I wanted. Now I’m in charge of YOU, and I have to make sure you never get what I have! Basically, “Regulatory capture.”
- Framing it as safety lets everyone avoid the antitrust problem of companies openly agreeing to coordinate. Basically, claiming everyone must slow down together, companies coordinate without getting blamed for collusion. Obviously, “antitrust shields.”
- Catastrophic risk talk keeps valuations sky high. Nothing raises a price tag like sounding too powerful to control. I’d call it “investor hype.”
- It lets US slow down China’s AI progress, but make it look like caution and not like they’re trying to hold that other country back…aka “geopolitical leverage.”
Just FYI, China is tightening controls without buying into the western panic narrative. Russia is rapidly doing its own thing for military AI. Meanwhile, western tech giants want “a legal monopoly wrapped in a blanket of fake self-sacrifice”. They think we are stupid enough to believe they suddenly care about our safety!
I believe a group of people are dressing up their own mistakes, their own market positioning, and their own competitive fear as a concern for your safety. That is not humility, that is theater! 💃
Note: Remember, I am not justifying the application of AI or how it is crucial by any means, read more about that here.