I've been getting questions about the AI warnings in the news over the past 10 days. They all equate to "Is this real, or is the coverage getting carried away?" Yes, there are real reasons to be concerned, and I think we need to understand them.
In this week's video essay, I look at the calls to slow frontier AI development, including the claims AI will kill us all, and Dario Amodei's proposal to pace AI progress. Independent testing and better oversight could help. Getting competing AI companies and countries to accept an AI slowdown is a much harder proposition.
The AI companies have invested heavily and face immense pressure to deliver ROI. Governments see AI as the source of economic and strategic power. Those pressures reinforce each other, which is why I think a coordinated slowdown is highly unlikely.
Read... no chance.
That's the short story. In the video above I go into more nuanced thoughts, ...
Sources & citations
- Scaling laws research
- Bill Gates: The turbulent AI era is here
- Anthropic: September threat intelligence report
- OpenAI: An Alien Mind
- Business Standard: Anthropic researcher’s departure
- Dario Amodei: We Must Pace the Frontier
- Microsoft: FY2026 Q4 earnings call
- IMF: Technology investment and growth
- Reuters: Trump’s 14 September response
- China’s official response
