AI 2027

It’s good science fiction, I’ll give it that. I think getting lost in the weeds over technicalities ignores the crux of the narrative: even if this doesn’t lead to AGI, at the very least it’s likely the final “warning shot” we’ll get before it’s suddenly and irreversibly here.

The problems it raises - alignment, geopolitics, lack of societal safeguards - are all real, and happening now (just replace “AGI” with “corporations”, and voila, you have a story about the climate crisis and regulatory capture). We should be solving these problems before AGI or job-replacing AI becomes commonplace, lest we run the very real risk of societal collapse or species extinction.

The point of these stories is to incite alarm, because they’re trying to provoke proactive responses while time is on our side, instead of trusting self-interested individuals in times of great crisis.

I fail to see how corporations are responsible for the climate crisis: Politicians won't tax gas because they'll get voted out.

We know that Trump is not captured by corporations because his trade policies are terrible.

If anything, social media is the evil that's destroying the political center: Americans are no longer reading mainstream newspapers or watching mainstream TV news.

The EU is saying the elections in Romania was manipulated through manipulation of TikTok accounts and media.

If you put a knife in someone’s heart, you’re the one who did it and ultimately you’re responsible. If someone told you to do it and you were just following orders… you still did it. If you say there were no rules against putting knives in other people’s hearts, you still did it and you’re still responsible.

If it’s somehow different for corporations, please enlighten me how.

The oil companies are saying their product is vital to the economy and they are not wrong. How else will we get food from the farms to the store ? Ambulances to the hospitals ? And many, many other things.

Taxes are the best way to change behaviour (smaller cars driving less. Less flying etc). So government and the people who vote for them is to blame.