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amalzain.bsky.social

@amalzain.bsky.social
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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 9h
My latest @newscientist.com cartoon
Panel 1: a large robot (composed of AI servers, network switches, storage arrays, and power distribution units) and a human are talking.

Professor "You don't want to destroy humanity do you, lLLM-A-9300x?"

Robot "Haha. What a silly question, Professor. I have no desires or feelings of my own whatsoever."

Professor (relieved)"Oh good." 

Panel 2: they walk on. The robot continues  "I am merely a tool of the company that created me. And that company, being composed of humans, will naturally have humanity's best interests at heart."

Panel 3: The professor is conspicuously quiet.
"Right?" says the Robot.
…
More silence

"Professor?"
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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Asked and answered 👀
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
2. But Anthropic researchers say they see patterns that suggest that Claude can. The employees at Anthropic are telling themselves stories based on the words they input into the software and the words that come back out. >>
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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Shit going on in those detention camps (especially the kids camps) is gonna crush your soul when you find out the details. And then you'll realize that you won't ever hear about the worst stuff because those people are dead. They got a concentration camp built in the Everglades in a matter of weeks
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Aftermath @aftermath.site · 08/10/2026
Unity's new AI thing is a soulless joke: aftermath.site/unity-spark-ai...
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
this is the funniest thing i've seen in a looooong time. city passes new rule allowing prayer before city council meetings. satanist prays. city council then debates proper time to "undo the curse that was just put on our city" www.404media.co/it-is-done-h...
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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 08/10/2026
lolol table L22 in artist alley come say hi
Greg Pak standing next to a banner that reads NO A.i. EVER / Generative "A.i." degrades cognition steals from creators is linked to murder and suicide enables fraud spreads disinformation invades our privacy gets things wrong enriches billionaires is pushed by fascists destroys the environment looks like trash makes its users look like chumps
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Techdirt @techdirt.com · 08/10/2026
Right On Cue: Here Comes The Skydance/Paramount Layoffs You can set your watch to it.Major media companies insist they simply have to merge to create all manner of amazing new "consolidative synergies."... www.techdirt.com/2026/10/08/right-o…
techdirt.com
Right On Cue: Here Comes The Skydance/Paramount Layoffs
You can set your watch to it.Major media companies insist they simply have to merge to create all manner of amazing new "consolidative synergies." The debt from the acquisitions then result in brand and company cannibalization as labor and consumers are forced to carry the load. The net result is mass layoffs, higher prices, and...
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 08/10/2026
I had a colonoscopy yesterday and of course I wrote about the experience. Come read why my colonoscopy was not bad at all, why I encourage those of you putting it off to actually schedule it if you can, and what a teddy bear has to do with the whole experience: whatever.scalzi.com/2026/10/08/c...
whatever.scalzi.com
Colonoscopy Post-Mortem
First, so as not to bury the lede: It went great, there’s nothing in my colon they are the least bit concerned about, and I don’t have to come back for another colonoscopy for a decade,…
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Butlerian Jihadist of House Dornick @shimminykricket.blacksky.app · 08/10/2026
Harvard just dropped a study AI productivity in software engineering and it found the average increase in productivity from using Claude code is.....zero and for exactly the reasons you'd think fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf
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ebisback.bsky.social @ebisback.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Exactly 💯
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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
AI has talked kids into suicide, fueled paranoid delusional that led to murder, degraded education quality in both k-12 and higher ed, run roughshod over copyright law, increased spam, fueled spam, fueled fraud, degraded the environment, put people out of work, the list goes on and on.
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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I'm just gonna bookmark this for future reference when Dem pundits complain about how the party has trouble communicating its message to voters. The reason you keep running into trouble with your branding isn't campus radicals. The reason is that your opponents purchased all the media outlets.
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Techdirt @techdirt.com · 06/10/2026
Meta’s Muse Is An Adorable Privacy And Security Dumpster Fire Meta's agentic AI product Muse has had a rocky few weeks since launch. The product, which features an animated avatar named Jolly (one... www.techdirt.com/2026/10/06/metas-m…
techdirt.com
Meta’s Muse Is An Adorable Privacy And Security Dumpster Fire
Meta's agentic AI product Muse has had a rocky few weeks since launch. The product, which features an animated avatar named Jolly (one presumes to make mass hyper surveillance seem adorable) is supposed to help you offload busywork like making restaurant reservations, paying bills, or ordering groceries. Despite Meta having claimed repeatedly that Muse was...
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Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal @jayapal.house.gov · 05/10/2026
Former FTC Chair Lina Khan is absolutely right. We need to enforce existing laws on the books so AI companies and executives don’t continue to operate without accountability. Congress must also regulate AI just like we have historically done with other emerging industries.
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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 05/10/2026
Exactly this. And in fact, many models *have* been created this way, and decades of prior machine learning systems *were* created this way, consensually. These things are choices! People are STILL working this way! It’s not just that a better world is possible — it already EXISTS. We can nurture it.
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 05/10/2026
This is your occasional reminder that generative "AI" in particular could have been developed on public domain materials and/or licensed and compensated works but the major players intentionally, methodically and systemically chose to steal labor from working creative folks instead
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The Pod Universe @thepoduniverse.com · 05/10/2026
looking for a new sci-fi TV series now that Star Trek is owned by Satan himself? The Pod Universe has you covered! The first episode of TALES OF THE LOST SHEPHERD is streaming now on YT or wherever you get podcasts.
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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 04/10/2026
New at Strength In Numbers this morning: Despite claims from some pundits and Republican strategists of biased and "fake" polling data, the polls and fundamentals basically agree on the blue wave: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-10-04...
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Elliot Blake @elliotblake.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Here’s hoping that’s the case, but if Democrats who ride that wave decide it’s more expedient or just easier to “turn the page,” they’d be squandering the opportunity to bury Trumpism forever. There have to be consequences for this mis-rule.
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Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Announcing the merger with Titanic footage is an incredible bit
David Ellison • @ellisonskyd... 2h
What once was the peak, is now just the beginning.
Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture. By combining them, we aren't rewriting history — we're equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first ho Show
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Brandon Sheffield @brandon.insertcredit.com · 01/10/2026
Several weeks ago, Phil Tippett's legendary animation studio in Berkeley, CA closed. An anonymous hero noticed a folder of CDs. This turned out to be hundreds of unseen hi-res images and videos from Star Wars, Robocop, Jurassic Park, etc. ~90 isos for you to browse: archive.org/details/tipp...
A casual Star Wars alien fella at the cantina, in a sun faded, reddish photo. Someone will be mad at me for not knowing who this is. Phil, a balding Caucasian man, poses a model of the garthok, an antagonist from the Coneheads movie.Phil, a balding caucasian man, points at some CG on a CRT computer monitor, as a younger man looks on. The screen shows a model of a dinosaur attacking a jeep, while there's an actual physical model of that event in the foreground for reference.an isolated shot of a star wars vehicle. Sorry, I don't know star wars lol
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Complexly @complexly.org · 30/09/2026
If it could be a crow or a raven, it's a crow. If it's a 2ft tall jet-black bird inhabited by a non-human entity, give it your whole muffin. 📺: youtu.be/Rk0sCYvmaag?... 👯: @hankgreen.bsky.social & @aabria.bsky.social
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Os Keyes @okeyes.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Since we’re doing another round of “AI will destroy humanity” doom-hype, it’s a good time to announce a new paper myself and my postdoc advisor just had accepted by BioSocieties on just this. TL;DR: almost all the “AI can make bioweapons” literature comes ultimately from the Effective Altruists.
ironholds.org
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Aftermath @aftermath.site · 28/09/2026
Slow Roads is a game for drivers, not racers: aftermath.site/slow-roads-imp...
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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
To people who don’t believe that Kermit the Frog is real: What is the basis for your morality? Where does your moral standard come from?
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Amanda Silberling @amanda.omg.lol · 28/09/2026
I'm interviewing Bluesky execs on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in a few weeks, so it's only fitting to ask on Bluesky... what do people want to know?
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Luke Plunkett @lukeplunkett.com · 28/09/2026
openai hacks govt website: i sleep person hacks govt website: real shit
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Michael Mechanic @michaelmechanic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
My god, the man just won't stop forcing his warped worldview down our throats. Chasing a buck may be his top priority in life. It doesn't have to be everybody's.
newrepublic.com
Trump Moves to Cut Off Student Loans for Tons of Degrees
Under a new rule, if your degree doesn’t make enough money, you won’t be able to get a student loan.
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Jared Yates Sexton @jysexton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Just helping with editing here. These bots aren’t sentient. They’re doing what they’re programmed to do. OpenAI, a private company supposedly bound by laws, committed federal crimes.
Screenshot of BBC article: OpenAI bots (struck through) meddled with multiple US government agency sites
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The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
1. The thing about Donald Trump is that he's bad at being president. I don't mean tyrannical or fascist or criminal or corrupt. Those adjectives obviously apply, but I mean *just plain bad*.
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AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics.
apnews.com
https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d
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arr @arr.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This makes me hopeful. This number is aspirational but nowhere near out of reach: a working professional could realistically cash out their 401k and buy off a public official. Owning a senator is more attainable for most Americans than home ownership.
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Aftermath @aftermath.site · 21/09/2026
Resident Evil feels like watching your stoner roommate fail QTEs: aftermath.site/resident-evil-...
aftermath.site
Resident Evil Feels Like Watching Your Stoner Roommate Fail QTEs
That is to say, it's a perfectly fine video game adaptation
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21/09/2026
LMFAO -- Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"
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Scott Nover @scottnover.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
BREAKING: TV pool will not be providing coverage of presidential events until further notice b/c of CNN's ban, pool chair and FOX News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton said. It's effectively a boycott by the fellow members — ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX: www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
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Owen K.C. Stephens (He/Him) @owenkcstephens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
"This election is about the threat of trans kids" is the worst possible messaging for Dems yet so many candidates are leaning into it. No voter will flip R->D over it. Low-info voters read this as "you're focused on bullshit that doesn't affect me" while the base reads this as "you're an asshole."
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Adam Becker @adambecker.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
@aoc.bsky.social just put out a great statement on AI. Refreshing to see a major politician on the left nail this. "Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity. But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves." 🎯
Charles,

Last weekend, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, one of the largest Al companies in the world, publicly asked his industry to slow down Al development.

Shortly after, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAl, followed suit. Then Elon Musk.

This all came days after an Anthropic researcher quit, citing his belief that this technology could wipe out humanity and that Al companies are "gambling with our lives."

For years, people have warned that generative Al could slip out of our direct control.

Those safety concerns must be taken seriously.

And this is why I have advocated for strict safety standards on how Al is built and deployed, public oversight over this technology, and using existing laws to hold these companies accountable when they cause harm.

But I want to draw your attention to another reality: Right now, the U.S. economy and our financial futures are riding on Silicon Valley's bet that Al will soon be immensely profitable and pay off. And that bet isn't looking good.

The formula for a profitable business isn't complicated: make more money than you spend. But the biggest Al companies aren't doing that. They are spending hundreds of billions per year on data centers, chips, and other costs while their ability to make revenues that exceed their already-immense sunk costs are unclear. Experts estimate that these Al companies will require another $600 billion of debt just to financethemselves in 2026 alone. That is more than the entire budgets of the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation, & Education combined.
Meanwhile, despite almost every single one of these companies not turning a profit & having sunk billions of investor dollars in development of data centers & other infrastructure, Al companies are also on a spending spree of hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying & dark money in our elections.
It would be one thing if we were discussing a few private companies with a poor business model. But last year, virtually all stock market gains - 80% - rested entirely on just a handful of Al companies.
That tells us two things:
1. Nearly the entire U.S. economy outside the Al industry is relatively stagnating and faring poorly & the gains from these few companies are disguising it; &
2. Millions of people's retirements - including their pensions, 401ks, & investments - are potentially exposed to this risk.
That's why these Al companies' dubious financial positions matter to working people.
These companies argue that debt is necessary. They'll tell you that building transformative technologies requires upfront capital, & that massive borrowing today will pay off in generating unprecedented prosperity tomorrow.
But this is not the typical debt that startups take on while they build out a company. We are talking about billions going on trillions of dollars leveraged with no indication that these companies will be able to recoup these funds profitably. And they are increasingly looking to the government as their source of cash.
In an effort to hide their debt, tech companies have been relying on "circular financing" where tech giants like Google, Amazon, & Microsoft give billions to Al startups like OpenAl & Anthropic, only for those startups to hand that money right back to buy Al processing power.
In other words, these Al companies are luring in new investors by making it look like their financials are healthier than they really are.What's even worse is that retirement & pension funds are key to supporting this illusion.
When the Al companies issue bonds to raise more money, your pension funds & retirement accounts are some of the biggest buyers. When Musk's Al business went public, it became part of index funds where millions of Americans invest our savings. Many Americans don't even know that their retirement investments are tied up in these companies at all.
From Big Tech's perspective, that's a feature, not a bug. By tying our futures to their reckless gambling, Al billionaires are trying to make themselves too big to fail. They think they can take such dangerous risks because we will bail them out if things go wrong.
Sound familiar? This scene is dangerously reminiscent of the rampant speculation, corruption, & broken incentives leading up to the 2008 financial crisis that plunged millions of working class Americans into financial chaos that we never fully recovered from.
It is no accident that these warnings from Altman & Amodei come months-if not weeks-before these companies were meant to go public.
When companies go public, they have to be more transparent about how they are doing financially. And after a waiting period, they typically have to let private investors-like their own employees-sell their shares.
The New York Times recently confirmed that OpenAl has postponed going public for this very reason. They are in no rush for the truth about their finances to come out.
But the moment these oligarchs began to seek our public tax dollars & public contracts while exposing their companies to public pension funds & investments, they opened themselves to public accountability & scrutiny.
Silicon Valley billionaires have rigged the game & are attempting to shift their financial risk to working people: If they're right about Al's potential, they reap the profits. If they're wrong & the bubble bursts, they are setting up the American people to pick up the tab.
Heads, they win; tails, we lose.We can stop this, and we shouldn't play their game. Together we can address both the economic and safety threats of unrestricted Al development and prevent financial chaos and stabilize market risk.

We must make it clear now that should the Al bubble pop, Congress should not bail out Big Tech.

And across our federal agencies, we have the authorities and tools to hold Al companies and their leaders accountable for releasing dangerous, unvetted, and defective products. We must not wait.

Silicon Valley billionaires want us to believe that Al robots will destroy humanity.

But the biggest threat to humanity are the tech oligarchs themselves.

It's time we hold them accountable.

Thank you for reading.

In solidarity,

Alexandria
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Senator Patty Murray @murray.senate.gov · 20/09/2026
No soldier’s sacrifice should be covered up. This is a disservice to our men and women in uniform. Trump needs to show our military families respect by being honest and telling the American people the truth about the war he started.
washingtonpost.com
More U.S. troops have died amid Iran war than Pentagon has disclosed publicly
Officials who spoke with The Post expressed frustration that the additional loss of life in the Middle East is not reflected in the Defense Department’s casualty database.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
An entirely reasonable organizational response from CNN would be that they will no longer host members of the administration as long as the administration bars them from the White House
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 19/09/2026
The 27-year old anthropic researcher at the heart of the last two weeks of media AI doomsday hype went on Fox News and said: "I agree with President Trump’s tweet that global warming doomsday scenarios were overplayed."
Anthropic researcher coxon looking all of twelve years old“The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by ‘Climate Change.’ That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they're on to the next one. These people are Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause. Soon you'll find out they're working for people that do not have the best interests of the United States in mind!”
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 19/09/2026
Every now and then I see myself referred to as an "AI Denier" and I want to be clear I acknowledge "AI" exists, it's just I think it's a massive energy drain, created from theft, implemented poorly for inappropriate tasks by loathsome tech executives who get hard at the idea of the rest of us dying
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The Onion @theonion.com · 18/09/2026
Trans Teen Hatches Nefarious Plot To Undergo Years Of Medical Treatments And Counseling To Win At Swimming theonion.com/trans-teen-hatches-nef…
Trans Teen Hatches Nefarious Plot To Undergo Years Of Medical Treatments And Counseling To Win At Swimming
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
There were a few “oh shit we almost nuked the world” events in the 70s and 80s that were due to a combination of immature tech and human error but then we sorta solved that until now when we’re gonna do it again because a few dipshits decided some OTHER immature tech should be in charge
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 17/09/2026
Over at the newsletter I wrote about the media's total failure to responsibly cover batshit claims that software has gained human-level awareness and will soon kill us all
karlbode.com
AI Doomsday Panic Is Completely Out Of Control
The press obsession with software-powered doomsday is a misdirection overshadowing a much deadlier reality: our public interest regulators no longer function.
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 16/09/2026
Here's this week's Better Offline: I'm joined by Cal Newport and @adambecker.bsky.social to get the word out that the narrative about existential risk from AI is driven by a religious cult of effective altruists and rationalists. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oVS... linktr.ee/betteroffline
youtube.com
Stopping The AI Safety Cult ft. Adam Becker & Cal Newport | Better Offline
YouTube video by Better Offline
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 15/09/2026
The U.S. AI industry is being run by a batshit rationalist sex cult, and no, I am not being hyperbolic - they’re genuinely Like That:
Erin Redwing
@realizingerin
I went to an rationalist/EA Al doomer event last night with the goal of meeting someone who could calmly explain to me the argument for how they get to the conclusion that Al will kill everyone.
Because these are rationalists, I expected to find people who could lay out a serious extinction pathway, walk through the assumptions and intermediate steps, identify choke points where negative pathways could potentially be regulated, and entertain disagreement about where their assumptions might break down.
My experience was the exact opposite.
The people I spoke to seemed psychologically unable to entertain the possibility that their conclusion (that Al literally kills everyone, which was a point that many would not even budge on) might be wrong.
Their most extreme conclusion was treated as an axiom.
I had multiple people walk out of conversations with me when I questioned their inevitable extinction premise.
At one point during a panel, the moderator asked everyone in the audience who was still skeptical of Al doom to raise their hands. About half the room did. He then told all of the skeptics to leave the panel and go with one of the speakers, who would answer their questions separately. They filtered out all the skeptics, and continued the panel only with the subset who accepted their extreme position.
I genuinely felt like a heretic just for questioning whether superintelligent Al inevitably leads to the extinction of humanity, or entertaining the possibility that the future might actually turn out well.
That does not mean Al safety is fake. Obviously there are serious questions about rapidly advancing Al systems and what happens as they become much more capable. Those are exactly the conversations I went there hoping to have.
But what I encountered was an apocalyptic death cult. These people are not rational. They are deeply afraid, they reinforce that fear in one another, and they have become so emotionally committed to apocalypse
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Aftermath @aftermath.site · 14/09/2026
Despite the price, the Steam Frame is the true successor to the Index. It just works, runs Linux, isn't an annoying Meta product, and might be one of the most significant pieces of hardware Valve has ever made. aftermath.site/steam-frame-re...
aftermath.site
The Steam Frame Is More Than Just Another VR Headset
The Steam Frame is Valve's latest VR headset and a worthy successor to the Index. But what powers it might be more consequential than many realize.
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