Rivals Altman and Musk rally behind Dario Amodei’s call for an AI slowdown.
Musk and Altman
“We Must Pace the Frontier”
They All Want In
Slow Down
Trump Rejects AI Pause
Is China Joining the Slowdown Party?
Before It’s Too Late
Trump vs Sanders
I agree with Trump, but it’s not his call. The industry will do what it wants.
The Prediction Department
Prediction: Elon Musk just made a call that’s impossible to ignore: “AI will grow the global economy by 20 to 30%, around 20 to 30 trillion dollars a year.
Me: Well, I am ignoring it. More accurately, I’m laughing at it. AI is not going to grow the economy by 20 to 30 trillion dollars a year.
What to Expect Q&A
Q: What’s going to happen with the agreement?
A: Nothing (In one of two ways)
A.1: No agreement
A.2: Superficial agreement they will all cheat on
Under A.1 they key players will all get together and bicker then blame each other for doing nothing.
Under A.2 we hear of some superficial agreement that will allegedly save humanity. If so, ignore it.
China sure won’t join this group. And the US players will all use China as the excuse to do cheat if they do form a superficial agreement.
Under the A2 scenario, we can expect a lot of finger pointing.
Musk will point at Claude who will point at Google etc., etc., and then they will all accuse each other of cheating, assuming there is an agreement to do something.
Who’s Stopping Anyone?
Nobody.
They all claim to want to slow down, but nobody is stopping anybody.
So why don’t they?
Because it’s a big “you first” setup with no volunteers. China and Trump are the scapegoats.
Doomsday Debate
Yesterday, I commented Doomsday Debate: Is There a 10 percent Chance AI Kill Us All within 10 Years?
AI alarm bells are ringing. What should we do?
Also consider Elon Musk Backs Universal High Income Fearing AI Will Take Every Job
Musk predicts employment will become obsolete.
Altman, Musk, and Benioff describe a world in which everyone is useless. Everyone gets free money, but where does the money come from?
Why will AI grow the economy? I just used an AI to diagnose a miserable problem with a beautiiful old car I have. The AI finally suggested a fix – I ordered the parts via Amazon, from China. The parts I needed were in the Amazon package that arrived yesterday. Today I installed everything, and went for a long drive. Complete, perfect absolute successful fix. I am so impressed. The AI, doing RAG, searching the ‘net, found an obscure article, provided it’s suggestions, and now, I am not going to buy this newer car I was looking at. My car saving repair, costs the auto industry and the bank finance folks – they now get nothing from me. Nada. If my experience generalizes, the entire auto industry and half the finance industry, might disappear. Seems unbelievable – but with AI and good tools, and rust-proof paint, maybe you can buy one car, and drive it for your entire life.
The disruption that AI might offer, might be curiously negative for large segments of commercial society. So much economic activity is driven by successful information hiding.
When everyone can know everything, much economic action might be not be needed in the same form as applies today. Economic action may go retrograde as AI is deployed.
China will never agree to slow down. They want any advantage they can get.
i agree with you Mish, it will not grow the economy by 30 trillion a year. I think it may have a negative effect on certain aspects of business and actually decrease. Certainly it will have a huge effect on the internet. I’ve noticed a lot of websites I no longer read are just posting AI generated content. The end result will probably be AI serving ads to other AI. And eventually the internet will go away.
There is no governance mechanism to contain this competitive dynamic. It is the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Pandora’s Box, the ultimate agency cost. Nowhere is there a genuine fence in favor of human-compatible outcomes.
Trump as usual is clueless and on the wrong side of it. He thinks it is the 1980s.
When Musk, Altman, et al call for a “slow down in the development of AI”, have they specified exactly what they mean by that? It sure isn’t clear to me. Are they really saying “We have a CapEx explosion which is going to kill some of our companies if we don’t slow down the race?”
Up until the fall of the Berlin wall and collapse of the Soviet Union, high tech innovation started in the military and worked its way to consumers. With AI, that is turned completely on its head. The guard rails the military placed on technology gave people access to the some benefits. At this point AI has escaped and caused damage. It should be kept in a government lab or military base, but too many people know how to design it and will keep some malicious version available on the Dark Web. Smuggling AI into the US should be no problem even if no electronic devices are permitted to cross the border.
It is always about greed and the money! Enough is never enough!