Essay by Eric Worrall
Climate crisis move aside, there is a new fake emergency in town.
At Davos, Guterres slams backsliding on climate commitments
22 January 2025
The world’s political and business elite present in Davos on Wednesday faced an uncompromising address from UN chief António Guterres as he rounded on a lack of multilateral collaboration in an “increasingly rudderless world” at risk from two existential dangers: climate change and unregulated Artificial Intelligence (AI).
…
‘Fossil fuel addiction’
Likening fossil fuel addiction to Frankenstein’s monster – “sparing nothing and no one” – the Secretary-General noted the irony that 13 of the world’s biggest ports for oil supertankers are set to be overwhelmed by rising sea levels, a consequence of rising temperatures and sea ice melt, caused overwhelmingly by burning coal, crude oil and natural gas.
…
AI’s untold promise
The next existential threat, AI, is a double-edged sword, Mr. Guterres continued, as it is already revolutionizing learning, diagnosing illnesses, helping farmers to increase their yields and improving the targeting of aid.
But it comes with profound risks if it is left ungoverned: it can disrupt economies, undermine trust in institutions and deepen inequalities, the Secretary-General warned.
…
Read more: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1159271
OK, maybe by “the next existential threat”, the UN just meant “another existential threat”. But it is an interesting turn of phrase.
Of course, it has been obvious for some time the UN would need a new crisis to replace the faltering climate crisis.
I predicted back in 2017 that AI would be the next fake crisis;
George Soros endorsed the AI crisis in 2023;
The fake AI crisis has long been an obvious replacement for the fake climate crisis, because of its potentially bipartisan appeal. Hollywood has prepped us with lots of scary movies about AI run amok.
So how do we know the AI crisis is fake?
The tell of course is the people pushing AI crisis narratives are the same people who pushed all the other fake crisis.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Environmentalists have been predicting doom right soon now since the late 1960’s, and have been consistently wrong.
A close friend in grade school in the 1960’s was a Jehovah’s Witness, and he was taught Jesus was coming back in 1975. I regard the greens and their exploiters much the same way as any millenarian preacher.
There is a market for doom p0rn.
When our local town announced a “Climate Emergency” (yes it was capitalized), I called them and asked if there was a local Doomsday Preppers group I could join.
And they reckoned I was the crank.
In the “Dune Trilogy” the humans had destroyed computers because they started to control humanity. LOL science fiction
When was it that Skynet became self-aware?
When was it that Skynet became self-aware?
Depends on where you are in the timeline / which movie you’re watching.
In the Dune films, they obviously had some automation and computerized machinery. Those ornithopters could not fly without them.
If I recall correctly, they outlawed thinking machines.
And they evolved human computers.
The continuing ‘existential threat’ to the world is …
The UN & the tosser in charge, who keeps mouthing rubbish all the time.
the AI threat will come from tech titans diverting power to AI and away from us
The election of President Trump proves there are limits to what manipulation of media can achieve. The key is to keep a firm grasp of what is real.
I’m a little concerned that Trump has been captured by the Tech Bros on some issues. H1-B visas and similar programs are one such issue.
Don’t get me wrong, overall, I’m very, very pleased with Trump. He’s learned a lot since he announced his candidacy in 2015. He hit the ground running this time and Trump now has many allies in the Congress and Senate.
It is the other way around – Trump captured the tech bros with his promise of cheap energy, which they desperately need to stay in the AI game. This need for cheap energy to develop AI tipped the balance in our favour shortly after 2020. Now the tech bros do whatever they are told, because Trump has got them by the proverbial.
This is excellent news. It strikes me as an odd coincidence that climate crisis shifted from cooling to warming just as the existential cold war threat disappeared, and that the woke crowd showed up just as climate catastrophe criticism faced increased scrutiny. Now that woke is dying, the elites need a new existential threat.
Maybe with AI robots the workweek can be reduced without a loss in income for the worker or profitability for the company.
I think the 40 hour/5 day work week is optimal for most people. People get bored and need some kind of external goals, which are hard to think of and keep up without a paid job. Maybe 30 hours/4 days, but people always want more toys and goodies. People right now could work 10-20 hours a week in 1950s style, but they don’t want that.
I can’t tell if you are sarcastic… Why would any employer continue paying workers if their jobs are done by robots. AI technologies are already displacing software developers — the same work can be done with much less people. This will start happening with teachers, accountants, lawyers, creative artists, etc., etc. Displacement of jobs and carriers across many domains, displacing two million truck drivers, millions of industrial jobs. Maybe birth rate reduction will offset the catastrophic consequences, but changes are happening very fast.
Less labor needed to make products means that those products will cost less.
Along with the reduction in the amount of labor needed, will be a reduction in the cost products for sale.
100+ years ago, 50 to 60 hour weeks were normal. Today, 40 hours is normal and people live much better lives.
Several hundred years ago, people worked pretty much dawn to dusk, 6 to 7 days a week, yet standards of living were a fraction of what they are today.
One of the rationales for the need for immigrants in the UK is a low birth rate and an aging population. There aren’t going to be enough workers is the justification.
Will AI change that by increasing productivity even with a greatly reduced working population? I hope so.
What happens when you replace Brits, Scots and Welsh with people who are not? Will the UK still be the UK or will it be something else?
Personally, I don’t care about a person’s race or national origin. But a nation shares a common culture and language. More importantly, the people in a nation share common values. If you bring in millions of immigrants and don’t assimilate them into he host culture, your nation is lost.
I think those damned Vikings caused too many problems for England. And don’t get me started on those French illegal immigrants in 1066!
That, it seems, may well be the objective.
We move manufacturing to Asia. Now we can buy cheaper stuff at Walmart. But with what money? You need jobs to earn money so you can buy things.
Back to AI — How do we handle the displaced workers? We told factory workers to learn to code. Then we imported cheap replacement knowledge workers from Asia on H1-B visas and outsourced hundreds of thousands of highly-paying tech jobs to contracting companies in Asia. Big Tech sold us a tech worker shortage and we sent out kids to college for STEM degrees only to learn it was a scam and there are no jobs for them.
Absolutely. This is a huge future problem for humanity. It might even be the biggest. Just to key in on your “creative artist” point, I just started subscribing to MidJourney, an AI art site for 8 bucks a month.
In 30 seconds, and I don’t even know how to use it properly yet, I can make superb original art like the Header artworks on here (Charles?). Artists are now essentially out of business or destined to be so very soon. I’m not saying I like it, but it is what it is. AOC was talking about taxing robots, but she was laughed at.
In his new life in politics, maybe Elon Musk has thought through some potential answers, if that’s even possible.
See what I mean:
https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/explore-prompting
Explain, please, how reducing farmers from 90% of the population to 1-2% has left 88% of the population still employed, and in better more productive jobs.
I don’t understand the question (88% ?), but I won’t be able to answer it anyway, as I don’t know anything about the farming economy.
I didn’t mean to imply that the problems couldn’t be solved – just that there are going to be problems in the near future.
90% – 2% is 88%.
When the US was founded, 19 out of 20 adults were employed in feeding themselves and the other 5%.
Employed isn’t quite the right word. Many worked to feed themselves and their families and had little left over to sell or barter.
That’s true. But is the AI revolution going to play out like other revolutions (agricultural, industrial, computer revolution, etc) or is it different this time?
The computer revolution has created new jobs with more overall employment. But those people who were displaced didn’t learn to code. What will we do for those workers displaced by the AI revolution?
You are way too pessimistic and unaware of history. 90% of the population was farmers for a long long time, and now it’s 1-2% in the US. The catastrophic consequences are new jobs doing new things.
AI is just one more example of replacing boring tedious hard and dangerous jobs with better more productive ones.
There is one fundamental difference. Whatever new jobs will be created in the future, any jobs we cannot even imagine today — if they can be performed by humans they can be performed by AI too, only cheaper and much better. Humans will be displaced from most anything.
No they won’t. AI will take the boring dangerous and easy jobs, just as all previous automation has done. Chain saws, bulldozers, same thing.
Experts* are divided on this one. Left-leaning experts imagine horrible dystopias full of restless, unemployed masses. Others imagine a golden age, like in Star Trek TNG.
For the former a new, collectivist social contract is required. But that’s their answer for everything.
*What would we do without experts?
Previous automation, as well as future automation, is not about boring or dangerous jobs. It is about cutting unit costs and/or improving quality. Is the job of a tax accountant boring or exciting? The AI will displace it regardless because it is much cheaper and does not make mistakes out of boredom.
The move from farms to cities happened when industrialization was creating new jobs – mainly driven by the cost of cars dropping and becoming affordable by many, which also lead to tractors dropping in price too.
However, what are all the people laid off from AI taken jobs? The industrial sector is gutted already, and the service sector is one that will be affected greatly by AI. And don’t forget that the great upheavals, revolutions, wars, world wars and depressions that have happened while the past industrial revolutions were going on in the background.
The employers, and governments need to put emphasis on worker retraining and also creating a climate where new businesses are encouraged and nurtured.
Retraining can’t take place before businesses create new jobs because it won’t be known what skills are needed.
I plan to be the guy who knows how to reboot the AIs.
Its nice to hear from the Luddite crowd.
You are welcome. I was not in that crowd until 2023 when ChatGPT started getting popular. Until then I was very skeptical about the implications even though I have worked in this field for many many years prior. As I listen to S.Altman, M.Zuckerberg, E.Musk talking as a matter of fact about the entire categories of jobs to be displaced by AI, I cannot believe there’re no riots in the streets yet.
I want to vigorously disagree with your dystopian outlook, hikaridai27, but I can’t form a coherent argument to support that.
From a purely utilitarian point of view, an artificial general intelligence that is superior to the most intelligent human, coupled with physical strength, dexterity, and resilience greater than any human, seems to render humans redundant for all current jobs.
We might for a time still be useful for spare parts for the quintillionaires or as organic pet food for their exotic animals, or serve as challenging quarry for their safari hunts.
At this point I beg someone to show me the error in my thinking!
I think you’re missing Hikaridai27’s and my points. First though, let me tell you what I know personally about Luddites. I know what I don’t know, and I don’t know farming economics, but I do know Luddism, having been born within about 3 miles of the Rawfolds Mill attack, a major event in the 1812 Luddite rebellion.
https://medium.com/@JonathanLBell/man-and-machine-the-battle-of-rawfolds-mill-a34c1ba9c922
The area, in West Yorkshire, has some remarkable history and is also a quite beautiful area between the not so beautiful old industrial cities. For example, when the Luddites met at the Dumb Steeple, a landmark that has been moved slightly to accommodate the main A62 road to Leeds, they would have marched within a few hundred yards of Robin Hood’s grave and Kirklees Priory, and then past the school where Charlotte Bronte later taught, probably coming close to a sleeping (?)Patrick Bronte who was then, from 1811 the curate at Hartshead Church. After the battle, two of the wounded Luddites were taken to the Star Inn. I lived from age two days to about 6 years-ish about 100 yards from this pub, which supposedly was haunted by the ghost of the young Master Booth, who was reputed to have said the immortal lines:
Can you keep a secret?
Yes.
So can I.
Right before he died.
https://www.spenvalleycivicsociety.org.uk/spen-fame-trail/the-star-inn-and-john-booth
So, anecdotal though that is, the Luddite Rebellion was a big problem. It was almost another civil war. Since the history books were written by the winners, it is not very well-known the magnitude of the numbers of people who were prepared to go to war and would have if it hadn’t been quashed early.
While Hikaridai27 sort of admits to possibly being a Luddite above, I don’t agree. People who see some possible bad consequences of Billions of people not having jobs (and who’s going to take all the wealth, all Jeff Bezos-like) are not Luddites. There’s a difference between being an observer of Luddism and being a Luddite. I certainly don’t want to stop it. I love perplexity.ai and Midjourney and, in case you’re wondering, I don’t begrudge my example, Jeff Bezos, of having 10 cents of the wealth he has.
…. and then the Kurzweil Singularity is a whole new topic that will include immortality.
And for this we pay Guterres nearly $300K/y tax free.
Move the UN to Burkina Faso.
Logistically it would be easier to ship them to Haiti I think.
Except, the poor Haitians have suffered enough I suppose.
Speak for yourself. I have stopped paying income tax, myself.
But of course, there always must be a boogyman. When one looses luster a new one must be put forth as the new narrative. When you own the media you use to be able to do that and get away with it. An AI driven society can be made to be pretty scary without much effort though. And the worse part is maybe it’s true!
Which is why weather reports now feature 26 degree C (79 F) day forecasts in blood red area coloring.
Well Trump seems to have found two new boogeymen in trans people and immigrants. Somehow western civilisation is faces an existential threat from being nice to the 0.1% of the population who don’t fit neatly in binary categories. Not to mention the fact that statistically illegal migrants are far less likely to commit a crime than citizens. This appears to be the
“new narrative”.
Perhaps somebody can explain to me exactly why I should care if a total stranger has an “X” on their passport?
And this qualifies as on topic how? Nobody cares about guys wearing dresses, except when said guys claim their dress gives them the right to use the girl’s bathroom.
That depends if the topic is fictitious boogeymen or AI?
We agree, gender reassignment drugs and surgeries are wrong for children.
“Not to mention the fact that statistically illegal migrants are far less likely to commit a crime than citizens.”
By entering this country illegally, they have already committed a crime. So the number would be 100%.
“Perhaps somebody can explain to me exactly why I should care if a total stranger has an “X” on their passport?”
Perhaps you can explain to us why delusional people should be coddled and given special rights?
simple politeness. Delusional people aren’t a threat and are not going to harm anyone. Everyone should be called by their own preferred form of address. Doing otherwise is just plain rude and doesn’t serve to do anything except cause distress to others. Trans people have far higher rates of suicide and self harm than almost any other group in society and if all it takes to save somebody’s life is to call them by their preferred pronouns who wouldn’t anyone do it?
The recent trans shooters would seem to contradict you.
If someone has a mental illness, and delusion is a mental illness (which perhaps explains their supposed high rate of suicide), they should be treated, not catered to. It is not up to me to try and figure out what’s in someone’s head at any given moment. I don’t expect them to do it for me, so they shouldn’t expect me to do it for them.
When kids in school are being disciplined because they “mis-gendered” a delusional person, something is seriously wrong. When people are being harassed or fired from their jobs because they “mis-gendered” someone, something is seriously wrong. A man is a man, and a woman is a woman. That’s all. There is nothing else, except in the minds of delusional people.
It isn’t that simple. Intersex conditions are well known and affect about 1 person in 1000. They deserve to be treated humanely and decently with the same rights as everyone. And whether or not you like it some people are grow up convinced that they are in the wrong body. And without being able to look inside their minds how does anyone know whether or not that is true.
Sex and gender are clearly two different things. By and large your sex is determined by your chromosomes (but again there are some individuals for whom this isn’t true) while gender referees to how you define yourself. And while in over 99% of people the two overlap that doesn’t mean that it does for everyone.
And even if some people are delusional so what? It doesn’t effect you so while not indulge them?
No, its nothing like 1 person in 1,000. But it would not affect the trans argument if it was, since intersex is not trans. They are completely different things. The intersex, unlike the trans, have an unusual biological condition.
You say: It doesn’t effect you so while not indulge them? But the point is, the policies do affect many others than the ones who are being indulged. All the residents of the womens jail to which Isla Bryson was intially to be sent were affected. All parents are affected by the ideologies to which their children are exposed in school and in girls sports.
As to self definition, you can define yourself as lots of things, a practical person, a dreamer, an engineer…. etc.
But there are some things you cannot define yourself as, because you are not them, and they are not self definable, they are what they are. Being a man or woman is one of them. So is being a 60 year old, you cannot define yourself as being 20. So is nationality, though you can change that, but not by self definition. So is ethnic background. So are many abilities, you cannot define yourself as a math genius.
The whole concept is completely incoherent, and as Cass pointed out, the treatments, particularly when applied to the young, are not fit for purpose.
“while gender referees to how you define yourself”
Gender shouldn’t even be used for humans. It’s a grammatical descriptor. But if you want to use it for humans, it refers to behavior, masculine and feminine. As you said, these overlap 99% of the time. But, you can have men who act feminine, and women who act masculine. That does not mean they are the opposite sex dictated by nature.
“It doesn’t effect you so while not indulge them?”
They are demanding that it affects us. That’s the problem. They want to dictate to the rest of society how we should behave and speak around them. They don’t have that right.
Do you always indulge people with mental illness?
Mandating “gender affirming” pronouns is compelled speech in violation of the Constitution.
“It isn’t that simple. Intersex conditions are well known and affect about 1 person in 1000.”
I seriously doubt your numbers. But, so-called “intersex” people are those with birth defects, plain and simple.
It doesn’t effect you
You’re right, it affects people like girls in high school sports who are forced to face biological males in athletic competitions and be exposed to their aroused genetalia in the locker rooms. I shouldn’t care about that, since it doesn’t affect me.
Intersex and hermaphraditism are rare. You’re trying to use edge cases instead of addressing the true issues.
Is this where you get your ideas from Izaak?
“simple politeness”
And how about simple politeness on their part to not demand that we do things differently just for them?
What is polite about boys demanding to use girls’ locker rooms or beat up girls in sports because they don’t have what it takes to compete in boys’ sports.
What is polite about demanding everyone else remember made-up pronouns, and scream for the cops when someone sees their beard and calls them masculine pronouns?
What is polite about dragging all this off-topic woke nonsense into a weather and climate blog? Perhaps you should recognize that your pollution is worse than misgendering some dude with a beard.
Izaak. this string of comment has what to do with AI threats exactly?
Good grief.
Thousands of years of human civilization and now we discover up to 5% of people are born in the wrong body?
Most of these people are just (severely) messed up. Living as the opposite sex doesn’t solve their problems. You’re spouting baseless propaganda.
Perhaps you can explain to us why delusional people should be coddled and given special rights?
And the answer? simple politeness.
So much for the concept of equal rights.
Perhaps YOU can explain why that 0.1% of the population gets to throw parents in jail for misgendering their own children (two states call that child abuse) and why girls have to put up with boys in their locker rooms. I suggest you go find some blog where that is the topic of daily discussion rather than climate change.
If a person chooses to have a sex change or identify as whatever, it’s their own business. I really couldn’t care less.
However, when that individual demands special treatment because of their choice, they’ve crossed the line.
Recently a man self-identified as female to gain access to the women changing rooms and showered in a pink bikini with young girls.
Do you defend his actions?
You have no reason to care about what any particular stranger wants to have in their passport.
But you should care about the sex and gender policies of the society in which you live. You can see this by reading the Cass Report from the UK, or from looking at the debates on gender which have taken place (and still are to some extent) in Scotland.
The basic position of Trans ideologists such as Stonewall has been to say that the concept of gender, which is non-biological, should replace that of sex in public policy.
From this and the other usual assumptions a whole range of policies follow, such as in the UK NHS referring to mothers as ‘birthing parents’ and breast feeding as ‘chest feeding’, sending men to women’s prisons (as in Scotland), schools diagnosing children as transgender and treating them as the other sex without telling their parents, trying to abolish women’s refuges, allowing biological men into what are now women only areas.
The view that it is possible to be trapped in the wrong sex body led to the London Tavistock abuses, well diagnosed by Cass. But the procedure of diagnosing this condition and then prescribing puberty blockers was common, till it was recently abolished.
There are many examples from womens sports of policy implications.
Perhaps the most surrealistic recent examples have been from girls football in England. A sixteen year old playing in a girls league finds herself opposed by a large person with a beard and understandably puzzled asks him whether he is a man. For this she is reprimanded and suspended from play. Other girls teams end up with injuries playing against teams with stronger and faster boys on them and start boycotting matches.
All societies have some policies on sex and sex roles. Its entirely reasonable for people to take a view of what they should be. Perhaps especially so for parents whose children are at a time of life when informed and mature choice of life changing courses may be very difficult or impossible, and where they are subject to influences from adults with an agenda or other children in the grip of hysteria.. The Trans movement has made some very radical proposals to change the policies that used to be in force in the West. If implemented in policies these proposals have large effects on many people besides the transgender, so they are entirely legitimate subjects for general debate and action.
Personally I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘gender’ in humans, unless the term is used as a synonym for ‘sex’. The term should be reserved from the grammatical concept, as in French nouns have two genders I don’t think any concept whose advocates can say there are anywhere between two and several hundred genders is meaningful. I don’t believe anyone is trapped in the wrong sex body – this is a theory laden and mistaken way of saying that they desperately wish they were the other sex. Nor do I think the usual hormonal and surgical treatments offered are fit for purpose.The whole episode has been medical malpractice based on a delusion.
But whether you agree with this or not, the policies are legitimate subjects for political discussion and action. Trump may be wrong, but he is not wrong because what he is ruling on is not legitimately of political interest.
“You have no reason to care about what any particular stranger wants to have in their passport.”
I disagree. A passport exists for identification purposes, among other things. If a person traveling abroad needs to be located, how will they describe them? “We’re looking for an X…”
Not to mention the fact that statistically illegal migrants are far less likely to commit a crime than citizens. This appears to be the
“new narrative”.
What are the crime statistics per capita?
Illegal aliens have committed crimes 100% of the time. Hope that helps.
Well, more accurately, 100% of illegal aliens have committed at least one crime which they do not cease to commit until they leave the country.
Izzy made his tenuous connection between the topic of the head post and his preferred propaganda rantings. He succeeded in his purpose of derailing the discussion.
I propose that we ignore him now.
You’re right, Rich. My language was inaccurate.
I don’t care if a man thinks he’s a woman, Someone who is that f*cked up needs help, not indulgence. They should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports, shower with my granddaughters, use the lady’s room with my wife or mother and they do not belong in the military or women’s prisons.
We just are tired of being told that it is perfectly fine for people to break into our country with no consequences and that we should cater to people who, at a minimum are genetic defects.
Is Davos really about solving problems? Or is it just a reason for to party?
– – – – – – – – –
Secret depravity of the Davos global elite:
More sex parties than ever, NDAs for prostitutes, transsexual women… and the most commonly-requested sex act revealed
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14314271/Secret-depravity-Davos-global-elite-sex-parties-NDAs-prostitutes-transsexual-women-commonly-requested-sex-act-revealed.html
So, now we know why Starmer was so determined to go to Davos…..
And the COP jamborees are worse (ultimately paid for by us !!! ).
As societies age, it will be necessary to perform more and more tasks robotically.
Who in China with their long standing one-child policy has help for their old age?
That same policy has effectively been imposed on the world. The extended family is becoming extinct, even in Africa. The present old and lonely cohort is a sad and bereft group. That is one reason they are so angry and ready to end it all, for everyone. They have no future and they KNOW it is their own hedonism and selfishness that is to blame.
On the other hand, if you have used any of the AI platforms, you will not long be awed by the results. The AIs are good at finding and repeating information in the data base when guided to it properly, but so far, I find nothing original in the answers even with hints.
That may change and then it is FAR too late; a superior intelligence will have succeeded us.
That’s very bold
Clever, but I would have said:
That’s very bold
It’s also very annoying. Like someone at a party demanding attention.
Well for once I agree with George Soros, “AI is a bigger problem than Climate Change”.
As Climate change is not a problem at all, it follows than everything is a greater problem than no problem.
As for the rising seas overwhelming the oil terminals used by super tankers? Guterres will be telling us next the seas are boiling….oh that was last year, sorry.
IIRC haven’t retired politicians and royals been buying sea front properties.
Sea levels have been rising at a steady rate for hundreds of years, supertankers float and the terminals could be protected in the same way as the Dutch protect their land that is below sea level, or else relocated.
“Guterres will be telling us next the seas are boiling….oh that was last year, sorry.”
Yet he hasn’t been sanctioned by the UN’s own Ministry of Truth for this obvious disinformation.
He’s not worth wasting electrons discussing, but I did find it humorous that the top 13 ocean terminals will be flooded but apparently the 14th largest one is not on the coast or has some kind of cliff? They really do think we’re idiots.
Anyone else sick of ignoramuses preaching AI doom? They haven’t the slightest idea what they’re talking about: artificial general intelligence, artificial “super” intelligence, blah, blah. A lot of low-information couch pundits whose knowledge extends only as far as Hollywood sci-fi movies from the 80’s and 90’s are pontificating about the apocalyptic fantasies they’ve imagined. Sounds a lot like the climate doom cult.
AI can’t “do” anything other than chew through huge amounts of data fed to the processor farms to train it and find patterns to make educated assumptions; sometimes better than humans. But the assumptions are only as good as the training data sets. And no, AI won’t become sentient, nor will it become our evil overlord. It can’t launch attacks or shut down utilities, nor will it ever, unless some fool gives an AI access and control of those things, which no one in their right mind would do. AI is simply another tool that can mimic human conversations, answer questions, interpret languages, create pictures, video, and music, give insight into a range of scientific problems, and do a host of other useful and sometimes silly things. It can’t “solve” humanity’s problems, as the power-seeking elitists who want to rule us think. It’s just a tool, much like internet search engines are tools we use every day.
Obviously you didn’t see the documentary, “Age of Ultron”.
What happens when AI evolves past chatbots? What happens if Iran or North Korea develops Artificial Super intelligence? Hell, what about China? They couldn’t keep the SARs-Cov-2 virus contained in their lab, what makes anything think they could contain a super AI any better?
The end of the world has been a risk ever since the CSIRO published an easy to follow recipe for the 12 Monkeys virus in 2001. Thankfully even the worst lunatics so far have hesitated to actually use the recipe.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/28/covid-19-that-time-aussie-virologists-accidentally-created-an-unstoppable-mouse-pathogen/
AI will be the same, even the most deranged lunatic will keep that off switch handy.
Apparently you don’t understand how AI works. Or computers. I encourage you to learn.
“unless some fool gives an AI access and control of those things“
Stinkerp, we don’t need to have AGI acting autonomously and self-aware for it to be a disaster for humanity. It is an incredibly powerful tool for controlling and repressing the population. Look to China’s social credit score system.
It is also a looming threat to essentially all employment. Not chatgpt, but derivative technology allowing autonomous robots and drones hyperconnected to sensors and global-reach satellite data networks. All of which already exist.
We already have examples that point toward job destruction. Have you not been subjected to talking to a customer service bot? Are you unaware of language translation tools? Have you not seen the videos of running humanoid and dog robots and swarms of drones?
Why would those who build systems for societal control share the benefits with the surplus population? What holds them back from killing off the vast majority who serve no purpose that can’t be achieved more cheaply, more quickly, and more accurately using AI-enhanced robots?
Men have sought since time immemorial to conquer the world and have absolute power. Have we changed our DNA?
Haven’t they warned us that we’ll own nothing and be ‘happy’?
Every threat you named has nothing to do with AI, but with the people who decided to deploy those tools, often for nefarious reasons. You could make the same argument about nuclear weapons or semi-automatic handguns with 9-round magazines or a Ford F-150 Lightning. It depends on how you use them. If you plow into a crowd of people with your pickup, you can kill a lot of people, but that’s not how most people use their pickups. And no one is banning pickups or innovation that might make them even more deadly if used in the wrong way.
“which no one in their right mind would do.”
Erm, what percentage of the population is not in their right mind?
Computers do not lie, which is true. But users do.
We keep coming back to Mencken’s statement that politicians create scares so that they are the ones to lead us to safety.
There’s truth in that, but at the same time, not all threats are imaginary hobgoblins.
Drones and robots already exist. Machines that speak to us and can interpret our speech already exist. Hey Siri, explain it to Stephen.
It doesn’t take a lot of fevered imagination to conceive of a “public safety” system being used to control our every activity, gradually leading to a complete tyranny that is impossible to resist.
They must be freaking out about China’s Deep Seek AI.
I find it instructive that we are told incessantly that China is the threat to democracy and the boogieman, but it is China that made their AI open source.
Yes, by “unregulated AI” they mean AI they’re not going to profit off of. If what I read (and understand) is correct, DeepSeek is a single-digit % cost of OpenAI’s best offering and is better – and as you mentioned, open-source. I expect US/UK AI stocks to plummet over the next few weeks…
I noticed that whatever China has done or allegedly done with AI, they did it without importing hundreds of thousands of H1-B workers.
The easiest ‘existential threat’ to deal with. Just toggle the on-off switch or, even better, pull out the plug.
Shhh – let them get some momentum before you take it away from them 🙂
Be cautious of AI, especially if logic/understanding is involved.
I asked the AI called ‘perplexity.ai’ this: “what is the increase in water vapor in 36 years if it increases 7 % per K degree and the temperature increases by 1 K degree linearly over the 36 years”
AI: 7 % (this wrong answer is common from human ‘experts’)
Then I asked: “wouldn’t the average increase each year be the average of zero at the beginning of the year and 1/36 degree at the end?”
AI: You’re absolutely correct, and I apologize for the oversight in my previous response. Thank you for pointing this out. . . . 3.5%.
Half of the total (7% here) is correct for a linear increase and a good approximation if roughly linear. Be careful about answers you get from AI. I have asked this repeatedly of different AIs including ChatGPT. They all did it incorrectly and then, after follow-up question, apologized and corrected. But when asked again much later, repeated the same error.
Their intelligence is artificial after all.
I apologize for the oversight in my previous response
Sounds like someone being grilled in congressional testimony.
That’s amazing – AI hasn’t heard of compound interest?
‘set to be overwhelmed by rising sea levels’ and when is this supposed to happen?
Yes, George Soros is a bigger problem than Climate Change.
Under the principle that it is easier to tear things down than build them up, there is big money to be made shorting the market while funding “progressive” policies..
‘So how do we know the AI crisis is fake?’ What does Big Al gore have to say about it?
AI is potentially only as good or dangerous as its initial man-made program.
It’s not the AI that we have to fear. It’s the HI that own and control the AI.
In a strange twist of fate: AI Introduces UN as “The next existential threat”
Robots don’t pay income tax. As a greater share of work is performed by robots the tax base erodes and deficits become inevitable.
And robots don’t require health insurance or PTO.
Citizens of developed countries don’t require health insurance, because the state provides healthcare. If your country doesn’t, consider moving.
That’s how the printing press, washing machines, dishwashers and computers destroyed all economies.
Oh, wait…
I hate the common misuse of the term AI. The pulblicly available programs we have now are not intelligent. Like many things, we’ve dumbed down AI.
What we once consider AI are now called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). HAL and Skynet are popular examples of AGI and ASI.
I’m now going to use the term AI broadly, to include today’s popular AI services such as ChatGPT and AGI, ASI and also robotics. AI promises a revolution in human productivity and threatens a replacement of human workers with intelligent machines. In the past, industrialization and automation brought about new products, new industries and new professions. It also displaced millions of workers as the new jobs went to different people with different skills and aptitudes.
Is the AI revolution going to follow with historical pattern? On the whole, those past revolutions created more overall employment and more economic output. Standards of living increased overall, although not equally.
Or will AI make the majority of us unemployed? With AI coding assistants getting better and better, I believe 80% of the software engineers I ever worked with could be replaced. What will they do, go flip burgers? Hah! Robots will soon replace fast food workers. Soon there’s only going to be one person working in a restaurant and that’ll be the guy who hits the reset button. And then they will build a robot to replace him.
In Star Trek the Next Generation, humans live in a post-money world. There every need is provided for, they work for personal fulfillment. Marx would be proud. Everyone is free to pursue art, literature, poetry, etc.
Given history and human nature, I find this rosey scenario implausible. We’re more likely to see mass unemployment, increased mental health issues, increased sloth, etc. That’s the threat of AI.
PS: AGI and ASI are or will be alien Intelligences. They will have no loyalty to family, tribe, nation or species. Or to natural life in any form. By their very nature, these Intelligences will be existentialist threats. Some believe AGI is here already and others say it’s 5 years away. ASI may be as little as 20 years away.
I believe AI IS a threat, but not the way I’ve seen most people talking about it.
When I asked about my own business, ChatGPT gave me almost entirely false information, including my location – which is in the first sentence on my home page, and my website turns up first in google and other searches.
I was reading about someone else’s experience with Perplexity, where it provided a summary and references – but most of those references didn’t exist or didn’t provide the information claimed.
These are far from the only cases I’ve seen where AI gives demonstrably false information. It’s like it just makes stuff up. The threat I see is that most people will accept it as true without verification (yes, WE won’t, but the vast majority will – they already do). What sort of potential problems might that lead to? I don’t think that can be predicted.
I also have another concern about this phenomenon – how did it learn to lie?
Yes, it’s both amazingly good and wrong at times.
It is called hallucinations.
When the UN tells us something is an existentialist threat it’s just a way to grift people. They want money and power. They don’t want to solve anything.