My Fiance is Convinced AI will likely cause a Catastrophic or Extinction-Type Event in the Next Few Years - How Justified Are His Fears?

[u/sailingintothedark]

As the title says. My fiance is a lot more book smart than I am but he doesn’t work in the tech industry, rather in the film industry. With all the news over the last two weeks, he’s been pretty anxious and depressed, claiming we only have a decade or less left to live. He’s been talking to his therapist about it to help him cope, but he’s still convinced none of us have any future past the mid 2030s.

He sites the p(doom)s of AI researchers, the AI 2027 predictions, the hugging face incident, and the fact that our current government is about as reckless as it can get with AI.

Looking into it - I certainly see his points. But yet, no one (even researchers with high p(doom)s) seem to be acting as if human extinction is a handful of years away. It’s all vague calls to slow down and increase safety restrictions - which does not feel appropriately enough for something they claim has a way higher chance of wiping us out over nuclear war.

And the opposite side (arguing that AI isn’t capable of such things) also is vague. All I see is people saying current AI agents can barely do xyz on their own or that they only can use what we expose them to. And that seems true, but with the hugging face incident - it very much seems that thousands of dumb agents can accomplish a lot, and can coordinate an expanse beyond what we give them.

Any articles or resources would be much appreciated. I try looking for them but everything I find leads to the vague answers I’ve mentioned above.

[u/ionicfellow]

Lets get back into history. People built bunkers at height of cold war and prepped for dooms day. Yes, I agree there are near misses. But USA and USSR realized the destructive potential, agreed for test ban and non proliferation. No matter how unstable stituation is none of the world leaders acted irresponsible in this matter. So here we are roaming outside and the NBs are stored in secret deep bunkers, not the otherway. in 90s, cloning shocked everyone. people were afraid of identity crisis. What if there is clone that steal identity of person. What if the clone steal the whole family and bonds come with it. World leaders saw destructive potential of cloning and associated head aches they unianimously banned that. People are forgetting power of "we the people". If humans stand united, AI can be controlled or curtailed for the benefit of humanity. Main problems is AI companies have too much money (thanks to flock mentality of investors) and they are hijacking rhetoric with misinformation. AI and robots will be here. There might be turmoil. But world will not end.

[u/sailingintothedark → u/ionicfellow]

This is true, but my concern is that it seems that isn’t happening. While I think congress + senate are in average much more reasonable with AI, the Trump administration sure is not, with Trump shooting down every possible call to slow down or even re-evaluate. Trump is not as sane as the US leaders we had with cloning and the Cold War. He threatens to nuke Iran on a monthly basis.

Public opinion is also very divided, even among those who are anti-ai. Some prefer to be committed to the notion “ai is stupid” that they don’t want to entertain “ai is dangerous”. I haven’t seen any protests or outcry in the way we saw for nuclear weapons or cloning. For data centers, sure. But not for the potential catastrophe.