As we pointed out last week, the narrative around AI as an existential threat to humanity merely seems like a coordinated information operation that pairs perfectly with resurrecting a stalled bipartisan AI safety bill on Capitol Hill.
The flurry of doomerist headlines from AI bosses warning of humanity's end if AI is not regulated reminds us of a similar information operation around climate change: humanity was nearing its end if the West didn't buy more solar panels from China, tax the working class into submission, eliminate stable fossil fuel power generation from the grid, ban Taylor Swift's private jet, stop cows from farting and, of course, our favorite, ban gas stoves.
Yet here we are today. The climate crisis fearmongering narrative has run its course in corporate media, and Democrats looted taxpayers through the Inflation Reduction Act to fund their climate pet projects.
The narrative timeline, as reflected in Bloomberg's story count, shows that "climate crisis" has taken a backseat in the news cycle, and now it's all about "AI safety" to stop these bots from ending humanity. Again, this appears to be a psychological operation to push stalled AI safety policy on Capitol Hill, just as the climate crisis narrative did with the failed AoC's failed Green New Deal.
Meanwhile, fearmonger-in-chief Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei handpicked what the New York Post describes as "super-woke globalists to save us from an AI apocalypse" for a safety board through a nonprofit called Model Evaluation and Threat Research, or METR, which would maintain "employee-like access" to oversee safety efforts.
Who controls METR?
"It's a group of globalists who believe in open borders, genderless pronouns, and promote 'Effective Altruism,' that believe all the world's problems can be solved with technology," the New York Post noted.
Sure...
More or less, the fearmongering, just like the climate crisis headlines, appears as a coordinated effort to push a stalled bipartisan bill over the finish line, while Dario wants a group of left-wing globalists who use genderless pronouns to save us from a hyped-up AI apocalypse. The last time the left did this with climate, it didn't work out so well for the country.