Or rather, this shows the difference between "believe" (political) and "believe" (use as a basis for action). I'm reminded of a story of how Afghans supposedly listened to the BBC World Service despite considering it enemy propaganda because the weather reports were really useful.
This is the Manhattan Project again.
I would like everyone involved to be a lot clearer about their threat models, with plausible series of clearly linked steps, rather than just sounding like a Vernor Vinge novel.
Before you tell me about how the CEO has taken a principled stand: on record, he had no problem using it against 95%+ of humanity outside the U.S., and was only against fully automatic AI killing machines, and only citing the technical reality of then-current gen tech, so one should read that as human-rubber-stamped AI killing machines are totally fine with him.
From Jacob:
> A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?” At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first - they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.
I’m not saying I’d press a button that had a 50/50 chance of ending humanity vs giving me generational wealth, but … I can see how someone would get there? There are percentage odds and payouts to match all risk appetites and valuations. Anyone claiming they wouldn't press the 1 in quadrillion chance button for 1bn dollars is probably not telling the truth, and after that, we're just haggling about percentages.
This is a highly uncertain and dangerous scenario. Breeding ground for anxiety.
High agency people often deal (cope) with anxiety by trying to control outcomes. Some just flee the situation altogether.
We have an example of both here: one employee leaves, one stays.