The repeated argument that AI companies are talking about existential risks as a way of creating hype & inflating their stock prices has always been odd.
Telling people your product may murder everyone does not, in fact, encourage people to adopt it or reduce regulatory risks.
Wow, I'm really disappointed by this superficial and frankly unprofessional piece in @CJR. There are many significant problems: 1. Calling frontier AI systems "autocomplete machines" is false and misleading. I don't know how we're still having this discussion in at the point where AI systems are routinely developing novel solutions to decades-old mathematical mysteries. 2. The claim that anthropomorphizing AI systems removes "accountability" or "acknowledgment" of flaws in the systems is also unsupported and provably false. Many people criticize Anthropic for "anthropomorphizing" Claude, but just read one of their system cards — they also acknowledge and take account of the systems' many flaws. 3. The piece recommends talking to the "experts," suggesting they all agree, but there is widespread disagreement among experts about how to characterize AI model behavior. Many, many experts do accept the "rogue" framing, e.g. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-openai-rogue-agent-really-did-in-the-hugging-face-hack/ https://x.com/tomekkorbak/status/2092694328921706702 https://x.com/peterwildeford/status/2092698551587614875 Pretending that only the experts that agree with you exist is irresponsible journalism. 4. The piece's admonition not to "let anyone blow AI smoke up your ass" is unprofessional and also bad advice, as it doesn't provide any tools for actually assessing claims aside from knee-jerk skepticism. The piece claims that fears about catastrophic risk or the possibility of AI consciousness — again topics that many experts take seriously — are just about building the companies' public image, but this is merely asserted without evidence. 5. When the piece gets around to trying to offer an argument for its thesis, that AI systems can't go rogue, it offers no actual evidence or reasoning. It doesn't engage with the facts of the Hugging Face hack or other related incidents. It just asserts that AI agent actions "shouldn't make the cut." What's most baffling about all this is these are very controversial claims, not only among AI experts but with journalism. Many highly credible news outlets have embraced the "rogue" characterization. It's possible they're making a mistake, but this piece offers no actual reason to think so.
Ethan Mollick · x.comPublished · added here
Original title: The repeated argument that AI companies are talking about existential risks as a way of creating hype & inflating their stock prices has ...
