[jeremyjh]

Yes and the dangers of AI overlords have been known at least since the first Terminator movie /s.

Seriously though, people tend to dismiss things they are know are bad if there is no immediate harm. Certainly they had no idea how incredibly pervasive the lead from gasoline would be, that it would be detectable at harmful levels in basically everyone. It is also hard to measure these harms. How much crime of the 70s and 80s could be attributable for example.

[AstralStorm]

Oh we instantly did know how bad it could get. General Motors,Standard Oil and DuPont knew for sure, they had industrial incidents and lied about them! US Surgeon General was bought, people with opposing opinions were sued.

It was instantly obvious to anyone that using leaded gas esp. in agriculture would be deadly and toxic. The risk was ignored for profit, PR handled, underplayed. Even the chronic effects were known!

We even had an early alternative of just adding more ethanol to the pettol. But no...

It took 50 years of scientists trying to convince public how deadly this thing is, with varied success. And 30 more years for the bulk of the phaseout.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Thanks, longer piece on that: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40593353

[j16sdiz]

> Oh we instantly did know how bad it could get.

Who are “we”?

The same could be told about AI - content farms, generating spam that bypass spam filter, etc…

Some people knew them, majority of the public don’t

[AstralStorm]

The Public, which is not an entity, also knew enough about lead. But they were not told the gas contained lead for the longest time. Ethyl was marketed as an antiknock additive explicitly dropping lead from the name for this very reason.

Then there was a big chunk of time taken out for WW2 where such considerations were pushed out. The issue returned later but then it was argued there was no alternative for years.