Pinchbeck speaks directly to camera to announce a free open Zoom call on artificial intelligence risk and to argue that the subject needs a citizens' movement rather than expert advocacy alone. He sets out several distinct dangers: that systems approaching artificial general intelligence could become recursively self-improving and reach superintelligence within a few years while the alignment problem remains unsolved, with expert estimates of catastrophic outcomes ranging widely; that automation is already eliminating entry-level cognitive work and will extend to manual labor as robotics matures, citing programmer layoffs, self-driving vehicles, trucking, and Philippine call-center work; and that control of the technology is concentrating among figures including Donald Trump, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. He also names a mental health crisis, the collapse of shared standards for what is true, and ecological damage.
In brief
- Pinchbeck argues that the alignment problem has not been solved and that a global moratorium or pause on frontier development is warranted before systems become recursively self-improving.
- Pinchbeck contends that job displacement will hit cognitive labor first and manual labor soon after, pointing to trucking, call-center work, and entry-level roles for college graduates as early casualties.
- Because AI systems were trained on collectively produced human work and on material taken without regard to copyright, Pinchbeck argues the resulting productivity gains should be distributed as a public dividend rather than captured by a small group of owners.
- Pinchbeck claims that the political and technology figures currently steering AI intend to control it as a resource, producing a society modeled on extractive economies where a narrow elite holds the asset and the rest are left in poverty.
- Pinchbeck argues that the standard advice from AI safety organizations, to spread the word and write to elected representatives, is inadequate to the scale of the threat.
- Pinchbeck frames extinction risk, mass unemployment, epistemic collapse and ecological destruction as issues that cut across the conservative and progressive divide.
Full text
Hey folks, uh listen, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about um this free open Zoom call that I'm organizing and kind of hosting on Sunday at 1 p. m. EST. Uh yeah, I mean it's um it's basically we're going to talk about AI risk and um it just feels to me that what's happening with artificial intelligence and the various risks that it's bringing into our world are just not being explored enough. And we probably need need something like a citizens movement um community- based uh discussions around the country around the world to um look into what's happening with artificial intelligence. There's about three different three or four different areas that are really crucial.
One is um you know that they're you know they believe they're moving towards artificial general intelligence and and it's clear that the thing is evolving you know pretty rapidly if you use it. It keeps getting better. Uh and then once we've reached artificial general intelligence, it becomes recursively able to improve itself and then we could very soon have artificial super intelligence which might sound great, could solve a lot of our problems in theory, but it also could be extremely destructive. And in fact, a lot of the experts in the field believe there's a significant chance that artificial super intelligence will annihilate humanity in total and make us completely extinct. uh it'll just see the the the planet as a resource, you know, and it'll rearrange all the atoms for whatever it wants to do, like create something called computium, which is basically maximizing compute power and and and or whatever.
It'll make it super cold because that's better for, you know, superconductors or whatever. So, yeah, it'll basically treat us like we might treat like, you know, rabbits that are in our like garden eating our uh vegetables, you know, we might like try to get rid of those rabbits, you know, probably. So yeah, and it it you know there's it's called the alignment problem and the more I've looked into it the more it's clear that you know this thing is moving very very fast and this alignment problem has obviously not been addressed. So that's one issue the the possibility that that you know this could happen within the next two to five years make us extinct and basically a lot of the experts in AI safety believe there needs to be a pause a kind of global moratorum you know kind of communication around how this thing is developed and studies of what it will do when it's unleashed you know beyond that even if it doesn't you know reach that stage right away and decide to like put us all in a zoo or rearrange our atoms for its own purposes another problem with AI by is this massive job loss that's coming. So essentially, you know, we can clearly see that it's reaching the point where art artificial intelligence can handle a lot of college cognitive labor.
And in fact, it's now becoming very hard for college graduates to get entry-level jobs and different careers because that type of low-level knowledge work is is completely automatable. Um so yeah so we're talking about you know we're seeing ironically programmers are some of the the first to get laid off like tens of thousands of programmers different tech companies and so on you know Amazon and Meta and Microsoft and so on Google but you know beyond that they're also working very hard on robotics particularly when we have AI that's self-recursively improving itself will very quickly have automated robots that can handle a lot of manual labor so maybe the cognitive labor will go first but the manual labor will follow soon. We're already seeing obviously self-driving cars like the Whimos and so on. But, you know, like self, you know, trucks, you know, trucking is one of the biggest industries in the US. It's like the largest employer.
Three million truckers. It's one of the best jobs you can get if you don't have like a degree. Um, and yeah, so if they be develop self-driving trucks, uh, that'll just wipe out that industry. you know f phone service people like the Philippines like 10% of their middle class or whatever is like in phones in phone in phone support for companies around the world that'll just be obliterated. So you know what's extraordinary is that nobody's really seems to be thinking about where this is all going and how society has to prepare. I mean there have been some studies done in universal basic income. this idea that you know if this AI if you think about it really developed based on collective human activity I mean they they've broken all the copyrights they're using everybody's intellectual property you know we all should have a dividend in the in in the sort of super intelligence race and if it enables incredible productivity with a lot less necessarily you know people working you know that dividend should be distributed through society it shouldn't just go to the tiny oligarchic few at the top so at the moment particularly in in America where we have you know Trump and Larry Ellis and Peter Teal and Elon Musk, you know, we can see their intention is to kind of control uh this resource.
I mean, it's kind of like, you know, we've had um complex, you know, society with a very wealthy middle class and with very complex economy and so on. Um you can sort of see that you know as they eliminate you know science and research as they um you know eliminate uh industries like renewable energies and so on you know they're sort of thinking that it's going to be um kind of like a third world country where you know like where country that has they don't really use that word anymore countries where you have like a resource like diamonds or oil and so you have a few people who control that resource and then kind of a military that that that surrounds you know that resource and everybody else is kind of left to into squalor and misery and so on. That seems to be where they're they're pointing us right now. And you know, I don't think we need to accept that. So, I think there needs to be some kind of gathering, some kind of movement, some kind of social movement, community based.
We need to one problem is there's a lack of education around how fast this is happening and what it's what it's already doing and what it means for the future. Um, and that's another area. So we have the one with the existential risk which you know experts say could be anywhere from 15% to 70% to 99% if we allow ASI to take off. Then we have the the job loss risk. There's an ecological factor. AI is causing a lot of ecological destruction with the building of the huge data centers, massive use of electricity and water. It's like I think they estimate in Ireland like 26% of all electricity will go to public you know kind of like supporting data centers.
Um so yeah so so um so then another issue is AI's capacity to psychologically manipulate and control us and how in the hands of authoritarians or people with malevolent intentions. Uh we could see like expert um manipulation to the point where people don't even know what's real and what's fake anymore. We're already seeing a lot of that. I mean I think in many ways Trump is like an AI president. He won in 2016 because of Cambridge Analytica and uh their use of machine learning algorithms to kind of develop you know hundreds of data points in every adult in the USA and then target microtarget those people algorithmically with types of information that you know create fissurers and their belief systems or ultimately shifted them from being Democrats and liberals to being very suspicious of mainstream news and and establishment media and liberals and democrats and so on.
So, you know, this was really an orchestrated multi-year uh kind of effort that ended up with this sort of Trump situation that we have now and this sort of moving quickly towards authoritarianism and the deconstruction of the constitution, constitutional order and so on, the end of the rule of law and so on. You know, this is all seems to be to me kind of like very synchronized with this artificial intelligence uh kind of takeover. So yeah, the only way you know and we can see yes, you can, you know, when I when I talk to people like Tristan Harris at the coalition of, you know, the Institute for Humane Technology or other people in the AI safety world, they're like, "Oh, you know, spread the word or write to your representative." That's obviously not enough. This is the kind of thing where we really do need people to get involved. What's great about this issue, you know, when it comes down to everybody going extinct, everybody's jobs being lost and only a tiny few kind of like um benefiting, massive mental health crisis, people can no longer, you know, kind of say what's true or what's fake.
Um and you know, the ecological destruction, um I know the right-wing isn't that into that right now, but they can always get interested in that. But these are all like, you know, universal bipartisan issues. So you don't have to be um just a liberal or progressive to think that it's important that people have decent lives and decent work and so on. And um I think this is an issue that if it was explained properly, you know, across the country that really people could come together around this and it and it and it doesn't have, you know, it doesn't matter whether you're a conservative or or you know, liberal. It's like if you want humanity to survive and prosper, you don't want us to go extinct and you want people to have dignified lives and and decent jobs or at least the possibility of that and you want young people to have careers and and and look forward to a to a meaningful and sensible future.
And at the moment, all that is being challenged by AI. So, I hope you can join this call on Sunday. Feel free to to message me. I'll I'll put the uh the info about the call everywhere. It's also on my Substack, daniel pinchback. substack. com and my my recent articles. And um yeah, thanks for listening and uh hopefully we'll be in touch.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.