The AI safety vibe shift
Once a fringe obsession of Bay Area rationalists, existential risk is suddenly all anyone is talking about
AI safety has recently experienced a shift in sentiment. After perusing various blog posts from OpenAI, I penned an article emphasizing the importance of heeding such warnings. Despite numerous cautionary tales, the mainstream largely dismissed existential risk as mere fantasy. However, a recently ex-Anthropic researcher's X post changed the narrative.
Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher, resigned and warned that neither Anthropic nor OpenAI was acting responsibly. He accused the companies of racing towards superintelligence and recklessly gambling with humanity's lives. This post garnered significant attention, generating 159 million views. Coxon's sentiments echoed those of OpenAI's chief scientist Jakub Pachocki in his recent blog post.
The Anthropic researcher's resignation and Hubinger's warning that he believed AI could kill all humans with a 10% chance within a decade further fueled the conversation. This shift in opinion can be attributed to recent events, such as OpenAI's attack on Hugging Face and the increasing public concern over AI safety. Additionally, there is bipartisan support in Congress for potential legislation to regulate AI development, with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar introducing the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act.
This act would ban the development of superintelligence, enforce a temporary pause in advanced AI development, and seek international agreements to prevent the development of such technology globally.
Written by urgent.news from Platformer's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
