Monologue: On Dangerous Rhetoric

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2:14Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline monologue. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

2:24Better Offline. Now I want to be abundantly clear about something. It is illegal to throw a Molotov cocktail at anyone, and it's morally objectionable to do so. I explicitly and fundamentally object to the recent acts of violence against Sam Altman. These acts of violence are not something I endorse in any way. I'm also glad that nobody was hurt. It's also morally repugnant for Sam Altman to somehow suggest, by stating that we should de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics around AI criticism, that the careful, thoughtful, determined and eagerly fair work of Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz is in any way responsible for these acts of violence.

3:00Doing so is a deliberate and cynical attempt to chill the air around criticism of AI and its associated companies. I do, however, agree with Mr. Altman that the rhetoric around AI does need to change. Both he and Mr. Amadev Anthropic need to immediately stop overstating the capabilities of large language models. Mr. Altman and Mr. Abaday should not discuss being scared of their models, as they have both done so since 2023, or being uncomfortable that men such as they are in control, unless they wish to shut down their services, or they should also definitely not say that their models are conscious or suggest that they have emotions either.

3:37Anthropic is particularly guilty of this. These men should immediately stop misleading people through company documentation that models are blackmailing people, or, as Anthropic did in its Mythos system card, suggest the model has broken containment and sent a message. This was not the case. It was in a completely separate instance to the container it was messing with, and it was instructed explicitly to do so. This is an act of deceit that is scaring people. These men must stop discussing threats to jobs without actual, meaningful data that is significantly more sound and rigorous than jobs that might be affected by AI at some point, someday, but for now, we've got a champ on.

4:17Mr. Amadei should immediately cease any and all discussions of AI potentially or otherwise eliminating 50 % or any level of white-collar jobs, as Mr. Altman should cease predicting when superintelligence might arrive, as Mr. Amadei should actively reject and denounce any suggestions of AI creating a white-collar bloodbath. This dangerous rhetoric is scaring people. Those that defend AI labs and indeed people I've spoken to are anthropic will claim that these are difficult conversations that need to be had, when in actuality, these conversations engage in dangerous and frightening rhetoric as a means of boosting a company's valuation and garnering attention.

4:55If either of these men truly believed the things they were saying were true, they would do something about it, other than saying, you should be scared of us and the things we're making, and we're the only ones brave enough to say anything about it. These conversations are also nonsensical and misleading when you compare them to what large language models can actually do. And this rhetoric is a blatant attempt to scare people into paying for software today based on what it absolutely cannot do and will not do in the future. It is an attempt to obfuscate the actual efficacy of a technology as a means of deceiving investors, the media, and the general public.

5:29Both Altman and Amadei engage in the language of AI doomerism as a means of generating attention, revenue, and investment capital, actively selling their software and future investment potential, based on their ownership of a technology that they say, disingenuously, is potentially going to take everyone's jobs. Now, based on the reports from his Instagram, the man who threw the Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house was at least partially inspired by If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, a Duma porn fantasy written by a pair of overly verbose dunces, spreading fearful language about the power of AI, inspired by the fear-mongering of Altman himself.

6:04Altman once suggested that Eliezer Yudkowsky might deserve the Nobel Peace Prize one day. I also think we need to be clear about the circumstances and the rhetoric that led someone to do this, and why the AI industry needs to be well aware that the society they're continually threatening with job loss is one full of people that are very, very close to the edge. This is not about anybody being deserving of anything, but a frank evaluation of cause and effect. Many people feel like they're being fucking tortured every time they load social media. Their money doesn't go as far. Their financial situation has never been worse.

6:41Every time they read something, it's a story about ice patrols or a near nuclear war in Iran, or that gas is more expensive, or that there are more worrying things happening in private credit. Nobody can afford a house and layoffs are constant. One group, however, appears to exist in an alternative world where anything they want is possible. AI people can raise as much money as they want. They can build as big a building as they want anywhere in the world. Everything they do is taken so seriously that the government will call a meeting about it. Every single media outlet talks about everything they do.

7:13Your boss forces you to use it. Every piece of software forces you to at least acknowledge that they use AI too. Everyone is talking about it with complete certainty, despite it not being completely clear as to why they're doing so. As many people writhe in continual agony and fear, AI promises, but never quite delivers, some sort of vague utopia at the highest cost known to man. And these companies are in no uncertain terms coming for your job. That's what they want to do. They all say it. They use deceptively worded studies that talk about AI-exposed careers to scare and mislead people into believing LLMs are coming for their jobs, all while spreading vague proclamations about how said job loss is imminent, but also always 12 months away.

8:02Ortman even says that jobs that will vanish weren't real work to begin with, much as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said that some creative jobs shouldn't have existed in the first place. These are people who sell a product with no benefit comparable on any level to its ruinous trillion dollar cost both financially and to the environment and are able to get away with anything and get anything they want at a time when those who work hard are given a kick in the fucking teeth, sneered at for not using AI that doesn't actually seem to make their lives easier and then told that their labor doesn't constitute real work by people that don't appear to do anything other than go on fucking CNBC.

8:43At a time when nobody living a normal life feels like they have enough. The AI industry always seems to get more. There's not enough money for free college, or housing, or healthcare, or daycare, but there's always more money for AI compute. Regular people face the harshest credit market in generations, but private credit, and specifically data centers, can always, always get more money and more land. AI can never fail. It can only be failed. If it doesn't work, you simply don't know how to use AI properly and will be at a huge disadvantage despite the sales pitch being this is intelligent software that just does stuff.

9:22AI companies can get as much attention as they need, their failings explained away, their meager successes celebrated like the ball dropping on New Year's Eve, their half-arsed sub-war of the world's mythos horse shit treated like they've opened the gates of hell.

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12:23Regular people feel ignored, and like they're not taken seriously, and the people being given the most money and attention are the ones loudly saying, we're richer than anyone has ever been, we intend to spend more than anyone has ever spent, and we intend to take your job. The mentally unstable took them seriously. Did they not think that people would be angry? Constantly talking about how your company will make an indeterminate amount of people jobless, while also being able to raise over$162 billion in the space of two years and taking up as much space on earth as you please, is something that could send people over the edge.

12:59Every day the news reminds you that everything sucks and is more expensive, unless of course you're an AI where you'll be given as much money as you want and told you're the most special person alive. I can imagine it tearing at a person's soul as the world beats them down. And I will say that what they did was a disgraceful act of violence. But what do you think happens when you go to people for years and years and years and accumulate so much wealth? Unstable people in various stages of torment Act in erratic and dangerous ways The suspect in the Molotov cocktail incident Apparently had a manifesto Where he had listed the names and addresses Of both Altman and multiple other AI executives And, per CNBC Discussed the threat of AI to humanity As a justification for his actions I'm genuinely happy to hear This person was apprehended without anyone being hurt These actions are morally wrong And are also the direct result of the AI industry's deceptive and manipulative scare campaign, one promoted by men like Altman and Amadei, as well as Duma fanfiction writers like Yudkowsky and, of course, Daniel Kokotajlo of AI 2027, both of whom have had their work validated and propagated via the New York Times and Kevin Roos, who should feel fucking ashamed of himself for ever, ever platforming these freaks.

14:15It's a disgrace. And on the subject of dangerous rhetoric, I think we need to reckon with the fact that the mainstream media has helped spread harmful propaganda, and that a lack of scrutiny of said propaganda is now causing genuine harm. I also do not hear any attempts by Mr. Altman to deal with the actual documented threat of AI psychosis, and the people that have been twisted by large language models to take their lives and those of others. These are acts of violence that could have been stopped, had ChatGPT in similar applications not anthropomorphized by design, and trained to be friendly.

14:50I genuinely believe that these things should not be able to have conversations. That shouldn't happen. They should act like computers. They should act like software. These people have deliberately made that not the case. They've deliberately tried to make them friends and are now trying to wash their hands of their responsibility. Nah, nah. It wasn't an act of violence inspired by Ronan Farrow publishing a piece about Sam Altman. It was the result of a years-long publicity campaign that has, since the beginning, been about how scary the technology is, and how much money its owners make, and how many jobs they intend to take as a result.

15:28I separately believe these executives and their cohort are intentionally scaring people as a means of growing their companies, and that these continual statements of we're making something to take your job or we need more money and space to do it could be construed as a threat by somebody that's already on the edge. I agree that the dangerous rhetoric around AI must stop. Dario Amadei and Sam Ortman must immediately cease their manipulative and disingenuous scare tactics and begin describing large language models in terms that match their actual abilities, all while dispensing with any further attempts to extrapolate their future capabilities.

16:03Enough with the fluff. Enough with the bullshit. Stop talking about AGI. Start talking about this like regular, old, boring software, because that's all that ChatGPT and Claude are. In the end, if Altman wants to engage in good faith criticism, he should actually act in good faith. And the same goes for Dario Amadei. This starts with taking ownership of their roles in a global disinformation campaign. It starts with them recognizing how the AI industry has sold itself based on spreading mythology with the intent of creating unrest and fear. And it starts with Altman and Amadei and their ilk accepting any responsibility for their actions.

16:43I'm not holding my breath.

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