Source: The American Prospect
by Ryan Cooper
“A lot of rich and influential people have suddenly become very worried about artificial intelligence models’ danger to humanity, thanks to several recent episodes in which various AI ‘agents’ carried out hacks of other websites and systems. OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and xAI’s Elon Musk all now agree that the government needs to help them set up a cartel in violation of antitrust law—er, I mean, ‘pace the frontier’. Yet for odd reasons, the ‘AI safety’ discussion has been focused almost entirely on rather weird-sounding future scenarios. Will artificial intelligence models unleash an economic or social cataclysm? Or cause the extinction of the human race? Or destroy all life on Earth? Or even turn all the matter on the planet into paper clips? Or all the matter in the galaxy? The universe?” (09/23/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/09/23/ai-safety-needs-more-evidence-less-fruitcake-speculation/