[DennisP]

It's possible for current harms and future risks to both be real. It's also possible for human civilization to address more than one problem at a time. "You care about X but that's just a distraction from the thing I care about which is Y" is not really a good argument. I could just as well say that copyright concerns are just a distraction from the risk that AI could kill us all.

And it seems to me that if the AI industry wanted to distract us from harms, they would give us optimistic scenarios. "Sure these are problems but it will be worth it because AI will give us utopia." That would be an argument for pushing forward with AI.

Instead we're getting "oh, you may think we have problems now but that's nothing, a few years from now it's going to kill us all." Um, ok, I guess full steam ahead then? If this is a marketing campaign, it's the worst one in history.

[jalman]

The industry does not distract from harm to shake the followers off the tail. Whoever comes next will have to bear huge costs getting over the insane regulatory requirements. The more politicians are involved in the process, the more secure are initial investments.

[exe34]

> And it seems to me that if the AI industry wanted to distract us from harms, they would give us optimistic scenarios.

Nah it has to appear plausible.

[ben_w]

People are very good at promising a better future in a non-specific way and without much evidence. That's kinda how Brexit happened.

It's when you get the specific details of a utopia that you upset people — for example, every time I see anti-aging discussed here, there's a bunch of people for whom that is a horror story. I can't imagine being them, and they can't imagine being me.