[ExI] how quickly this notion went mainstream

[spike at rainier66.com]

Yesterday I posted on the possibility of making money with political betting
on a candidate who openly opposes AI.  Today I find that it isn't only the
American Left which is sending out the warning.  This article is from the
FreePress, which I think is a right wing news source, but I don't know that
for sure.  I couldn't follow the link to the story at the bottom of the
article because I don't subscribe to the FreePress.  I got to here from a
link on TwitterX.

 

See what you think:

 

The FreePress:

 

It's Thursday, September 10. This is The Front Page, your daily window into
the world of The Free Press-and our take on the world at large. Today:
Audrey Fahlberg reports on Trump's midterm infomercial. Maya Sulkin talks
9/11, Mamdani, and more with former New York governor George Pataki. Kat
Rosenfield reviews Jon Ronson's new book about the masculinity crisis. The
latest Free Press poll. And much more.

But first: None of that will matter if the AI kills us all.

The stakes of the fast-moving debate over the pros and cons of artificial
intelligence are almost too high to fathom. This week, Silicon Valley-and
most of the rest of us-are fixated on one unnerving question: Is AI going to
kill us all?

It began Tuesday night, when 27-year-old Anthropic and OpenAI researcher
Jacob Coxon
<https://substack.com/redirect/ef3789f4-4cff-4802-8ce3-41745b06694f?j=eyJ1Ij
oiMXJvMjlpIn0.fmWGtmiZfTbJtebWyY7eyUPJ02NDnDG3bFNROumJgQs> announced on X
that he had resigned. The companies, he wrote, "are racing straight to
self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. . . . The
people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of
the decade."

By Wednesday night, the post had been viewed more than 125 million times,
and counting. It also set off a wave of responses from AI researchers,
including Anthropic Alignment Science Lead Evan Hubinger,
<https://substack.com/redirect/bd254125-e093-4b03-8f46-f253b4dd1c52?j=eyJ1Ij
oiMXJvMjlpIn0.fmWGtmiZfTbJtebWyY7eyUPJ02NDnDG3bFNROumJgQs> who wrote: "[W]e
really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it
is >10% within the next decade."

The tricky thing about this debate isn't just that it can get pretty
technical pretty quickly. It's that the news is full of doomsday warnings.
It's next to impossible to know which to tune out, and which to take
seriously.

We've worked hard to separate the signal from the noise on this issue here
at The Free Press. And lately, our resident polymath economist Tyler Cowen
has injected some
<https://substack.com/redirect/005576d6-e90f-4faf-9ce6-dfc41dfc8354?j=eyJ1Ij
oiMXJvMjlpIn0.fmWGtmiZfTbJtebWyY7eyUPJ02NDnDG3bFNROumJgQs> healthy
skepticism into the conversation about the harm AI may cause.

But Coxon's post went viral for a reason. It was one of the bluntest
statements yet of the case for AI catastrophe-and it has coincided with
breathtaking new evidence of the technology's growing power, from last
month's Hugging Face hack to the Millennium Prize math problem Open AI
<https://substack.com/redirect/a29bf627-f687-48e3-a6c5-42c4467d8164?j=eyJ1Ij
oiMXJvMjlpIn0.fmWGtmiZfTbJtebWyY7eyUPJ02NDnDG3bFNROumJgQs> claimed it solved
this week. So today we're leading with an essay by someone who, like Coxon,
worked at the bleeding edge of AI research before resigning because of what
he saw.

Daniel Kokotajlo is a former OpenAI researcher who resigned in 2024. Writing
in The Free Press today, he explains why he left, and why he believes
Coxon's fears are well-founded. His warning is stark, and worth engaging
with: Yes, says Daniel, AI might really kill us all.



 
<https://substack.com/redirect/6269c0b8-7666-4048-a7fe-257f40df536d?j=eyJ1Ij
oiMXJvMjlpIn0.fmWGtmiZfTbJtebWyY7eyUPJ02NDnDG3bFNROumJgQs> 

	
 <https://substack.com/profile/548788795-daniel-kokotajlo> Daniel Kokotajlo
. Tech and Business

	

 
<https://substack.com/redirect/6269c0b8-7666-4048-a7fe-257f40df536d?j=eyJ1Ij
oiMXJvMjlpIn0.fmWGtmiZfTbJtebWyY7eyUPJ02NDnDG3bFNROumJgQs> 

 
<https://substack.com/redirect/6269c0b8-7666-4048-a7fe-257f40df536d?j=eyJ1Ij
oiMXJvMjlpIn0.fmWGtmiZfTbJtebWyY7eyUPJ02NDnDG3bFNROumJgQs> Yes, AI Might
Really Kill Us All

 

	



 
<https://substack.com/redirect/6269c0b8-7666-4048-a7fe-257f40df536d?j=eyJ1Ij
oiMXJvMjlpIn0.fmWGtmiZfTbJtebWyY7eyUPJ02NDnDG3bFNROumJgQs> Read story >

		

 

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