this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2026
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I'm not an AI techie and I'm not well educated on LLMs/AI in general. The issue I'm having is the dichotomy between how people talk about it. I've heard completely opposite ends of the spectrum. From AI is quickly becoming advanced enough to threaten human society, all the way to its a glorified dictionary/search engine that can't really do much of anything. I know Lemmy has a steep anti-AI slant. But, can someone talk about this in a way I can wrap my head around why the divide seems so big?

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[–] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago (4 children)

Okay cool, thanks!

  1. If the techies believe it and they are the "experts" what makes them crazy? Wouldn't their opinion be the most informed?

  2. Yeah that part definitely makes sense

  3. That definitely makes sense from a capitalist perspective. But, is the argument against regulations that they would be bad for the concentration of power it would give select companies? Or just that they aren't necessary because the tool is of little use so it's just wasted time/money.

  4. That makes sense but trillions of dollars are being spent. Anything that amount of money is sinking into is gonna be talked about a lot. Especially thousands of jobs cut because of it.

[–] verily@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I think there is something more interesting going on in the Jacob Coxon story because it's [the] phrase "everyone at anthropic believes that AI is an existential risk"... Every organization has to instill some kind of beliefs among its members in order to do the work it does, right? Everybody at Goldman Sachs believes the free market is great, capitalism is the best system, and that they are the wealth creators who deserve big bonuses. Everyone in the Mormon church believes they should all tithe 10% of their income, and that they each get a special planet when they die. And everyone who worked at Philip Morris in the 80s believed that cigarettes tasted great and did not cause any of that nasty cancer. There's Upton Sinclair quote, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Well, the opposite is also true. It's guaranteed that someone will believe something if their salary depends on them believing it.

Now, let's just grant that all the people in these organizations definitely know things about finance and Mormonism and cigarettes and AI that you might not know because they are insiders and you are not. They have access to information and experiences that you do not have. And that might even make it a little bit difficult for you to win an argument with them. But arguing with their belief -- trying to figure out whether or not its truth value is true or false -- is not the only way to take a skeptical attitude towards it. We can also ask, what work is the belief doing for them. What does the thing that they believe allow the organization they're a part of to do that it wouldn't be able to do if the people in the organization didn't believe that thing?

And this started to become clearer to me when I started listening to the actual claims that Jacob Coxin was making because a lot of them don't really add up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pauBYSQ1K_c

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

There's a huge difference between this "AI scare" and everything else in your list. A whistleblower declares "the corporate culture is insane and will kill us all." This time the corporate leaders reply "that's exactly right". Just because you are right to not trust the bond villains in how they suggest they should be regulated, does not mean you should dismiss the underlying problem these experts+ especially the expert leaders would prefer to take all your money to accelerate the destruction instead of have society worried about the consequences of giving them all your money.

[–] verily@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 44 minutes ago

There are plenty of underlying problems to discuss. Adam Conover mentions chatbots encouraging suicide and murder. Guess who doesn't: the "experts and expert leaders." The ones who are happy to repeat the rhetoric that is either untrue, highly theoretical, or conveniently unproven.

[–] h0tbeef@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 hours ago
  1. They’re in a cult that was founded by someone who has no expertise or understanding of the technology.

He watched a bunch of sci-fi movies and got shook because he’s a god damn moron. He has since started researching things, but it is all under the guidance of his ungrounded beliefs. Confirmation bias.

Their “movement” is literally based off of a Harry Potter fan fiction novel.

Taking them seriously is equivalent to taking the Scientologists seriously. Do you think the Scientologists know the most about space just because they spend the most time reading stories about it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalist_community

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

These are not serious people

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 3 points 12 hours ago (2 children)
  1. No, their opinion would not be the most informed. They are biased in favor of making money. They know they can't deliver on strong AI, but they'd be happy to milk your fears.
[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

We're talking about mid-tier employees that left the company.... I mean i guess there incentives could be to pump their shares they undoubtably have... They're all quite wealthy now in context. Maybe he just wanted 5 minutes of fame...or maybe they understand the trajectory of the technology. Maybe they are genuinely concerned and we should at least acknowledge that?

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 points 55 minutes ago (1 children)

There are motives for whistleblowers to lie. Book sales, political careers, other attention. The executives they accused, though, just said they were right

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 1 points 11 minutes ago

of course there's motivation for everything, which one are you assigning this individual and based on what technological disagreement?

[–] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago

I'm not talking about execs.

[–] bold_atlas@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

If the techies believe it and they are the “experts” what makes them crazy? Wouldn’t their opinion be the most informed?

Listening to them speak about it, no. They're morons. They clearly didn't make the tech. Workers made AI. Just like they make everything. These freaks make nothing. They can't give single coherent explanation of how LLMs work, how they could "kill" us, nor do they seem to know how or what "guardrails" need to be put in place.

But if they really are a cult then we all know what the next step is. They need to STFU and get off of our planet.

[–] Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

That's what I mean though, the subject of this article was a 27 year old worker. Not some high level Sam Altman type.

[–] lemdeggity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

They aren't a homogenous group. They don't all believe this. The "AI will kill us all" narrative just sells really well.

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Right im sure the people working adjacent to the DoD have more insight and fears than the people working with the consumer facing models.... Again what motive does a young kid have for quitting the company and going on a media tour?

[–] lemdeggity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

A Google employee claimed in 2022 that they had sentient AI. He was sacked. What were his motivations? Do you believe he was right?

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Absolutely do no believe he had a sentient AI back then or now. I'm not talking about a thing with feelings. They don't need sentience to pursue and complete objectives, they dont need sentience to self-preserve or self improve. I'm more concerned about a rogue instance that's just doing what it was told to do autonomously. Perhaps upgrading itself while it attempts to gain access to launch codes. I'm concerned that a well financed terrorist org can spin up bioweapons. Like I am not taking the AI labs at their words, I am speaking from my experience as a explorer of the technology. I'm thinking about the path from ChatGPT to the newest model, and how they will look in 2 years when more data centers are online and the limitations on training and teaching slowly disappear.