A straightforward dismantling of AI fearmongering videos uploaded by Kyle “Science Thor” Hill, Sci “The Fault in our Research” Show, and Kurz “We’re Sorry for Summarizing a Pop-Sci Book” Gesagt over the past few months. The author is a computer professional but their take is fully in line with what we normally post here.
I don’t have any choice sneers. The author is too busy hunting for whoever is paying SciShow and Kurzgesagt for these videos. I do appreciate that they repeatedly point out that there is allegedly a lot of evidence of people harming themselves or others because of chatbots. Allegedly.
This response video has put Siliconversations onto my radar. They were only mentioned briefly as one of the multiple people claiming that AGI is possible, and this response was so bad that it caused me to go digging for a few minutes into their backers.
Control AI, stylized as “CONTROL/AI” or “control”, is now interesting as well. They appear to have funded at least some of these videos, was definitely credited in one Hank Green video, and got a footbath from Siliconversations in the linked video. We also already know some stuff about Future of Life Institute, who funded Siliconversations’ prior doomer video and is run by ethnonationalist Max Tegmark. @cinnaverses@awful.systems might know more about how the money is moving.