A fresh wave of dire warnings about artificial intelligence has crashed against the shores of Silicon Valley with all the impact of a notification you’ve already swiped away.
Executives and investors, many of whom are currently converting their AI investments into actual yachts, have met these apocalyptic forecasts with the kind of skepticism usually reserved for restaurant health inspections. One venture capitalist reportedly laughed so hard at a presentation on existential risk that his $4,000 sneakers nearly flew off.
The timing is impeccable. Just as researchers and ethicists are publishing increasingly urgent analyses about what happens when we build something smarter than us and then lose control of it, the people actually building it are treating the whole thing like a motivational poster in a gym locker room. “We’re all going to die” is apparently the new “It gets easier.”
What makes this genuinely funny—in the way watching someone ignore a smoke detector while cooking is funny—is that these warnings are not coming from Luddites or people who think email is still a fad. They are coming from the people who literally invented the technology. It is like your car’s engineer calling you to say the brakes might fail, and you responding by scheduling a test drive.
The disconnect is so complete that you have to respect the commitment. These executives have bet their fortunes, their reputations, and apparently our collective future on the idea that everything will work out fine. And they are laughing all the way to the bank, which, to be fair, is probably a safer place to be than anywhere else when the robots start asking questions.