The People Vs Big AI

AI just turned political.

It feels the narrative shifted real fast from promises of great productivity and prosperity for everyone...

To AI being an existential danger for humanity in general.

This is an outcome that was always on the cards – and technologists talked about it many years ago.

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Now it seems they are using this extreme scenario to weaponise AI.

But for what?

Let's look at some of the statements Big AI has made on the dangers of AI.

Sam Altman: “The development of superhuman machine intelligence is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity.”

Sam Altman: “We could lose control of the future to AI.”

Dario Amodei: “If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.”

Elon Musk: “I do think there’s a certain probability it’s an existential threat, but I can’t stop it. So I basically have two choices: be a participant or be a bystander.”

Bill Gates: AI is “the most dangerous thing that humans have ever gone near,” and it “makes nuclear weapons look like nothing.”

Peculiar that all those statements come as both OpenAI and Anthropic are about to float, after having raised hundreds of billions of dollars, including from Big Tech companies.

So what could be behind this seemingly orchestrated attempt to put some actual fear in the hearts of the people?

Are these tech titans just hedging their bets if things turn ugly?
Are they saying all this to prepare us for something?
Or all of the above – laying the ground to play things as they unfold.

We wrote on the worsening position that US AI Labs find themselves – in Are AI Labs too big to fail?

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And this is why the numbers that came out of the Anthropic Investor Day did not catch us off guard.

Read Flash Philo on Anthropic + The Neocloud Fallout here.

In this piece we touched on where OpenAI and Anthropic find themselves in the typical life cycle – and the logical scenaria to be expected going forward.

We touched on their shifting economics and offered insights on what's changing for them.

The People Vs Big AI

I see this emerging theme playing out in a number of ways.

AI Vs Jobs
Data Center Proliferation Vs The People
AI Vs Humanity
Soul Vs Steel

The cascading effects of these layers are complex, and result in higher-order effects that are difficult to understand at this stage.

The US heads into midterm elections next week, a key test of Donald Trump’s term thus far. A major defeat means Republicans lose control of both Houses – and practically sets the stage for a Democrat in the White House next.

The Headwind 🔻

In LaaS, I touched on the dynamic where the proliferation of AI technology shifts from an economic tailwind – to an economic headwind.

We now see mass layoffs gaining momentum, and Microsoft announcing a plan to layoff 60,000 workers – 1/3 of their workforce!

This increasingly puts AI at the opposite side of the table from The People.

This complicates the interplay between Tech/AI – and politics, regulators and the people massively.

Here are some of my working scenaria that I expect to play out as a result of this.

The State, at least in the US, has been a positive force to AI proliferation. The Americans see AI Supremacy as part and parcel with Technological Supremacy.

They see their dominance in AI as key to their future of Everything Supremacy.

And the economic effects weren't so bad either. The stock market has been on a huge run, spreading the wealth effect across the economy. No political party could step against that.

In fact, whenever the markets corrected – the authorities came out together to announce big projects and put their back behind the markets.

The government worked closely with Big Tech in initiatives like the Stargate Project – so Donald could announce trillions in investments, jobs for everyone and make the markets rally.

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Note: The focus was on the superficial and the readily apparent, not the substance of it all. It didn't matter if Stargate never happened, as long as he could announce it.

Now, things are turning...

Promises of wealth and abundance for all are fading as Big Tech (and others) engage in mass layoffs – in order to spend more on AI infrastructure. And to show how their AI investments resulted in productivity.

And the productivity that was promised? It remains to be seen who will benefit from it.

Meanwhile, Data Centre proliferation is really starting to affect the quality of life of the average American. Just another way in which AI is turning political, fast.

Donald posted on his Truth Social account about this, even suggesting that Data Centers pay a dividend (?) to the local community – as well as produce their own electricity and sell it back to the community.

Polls are showing the people are turning against data centres, super fast. Even suggesting that the Democrats are better positioned to protect them from more of them.

We explained in the piece below how difficult it is for politicians to turn against AI on a dime.

Big Tech & AI have become so entrenched – that they are now the whole trade.

Going against AI means –> you go against Big Tech –> the stock market –> the wealth effect –> and the people's money.

And this is why politics is still playing both sides. And choosing their words very carefully.

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A blow-up in the stock market, a massive AI-induced event, or an AI-caused economic recession would change that.

Essays in Existenti-AI-lism

"Besides AI taking our jobs and our resources straight from our backyard...

So it can continue to train itself on our own creations – only to sell them back to us cheaper, until it puts us out of business...

If that wasn't enough – we are also under the threat of an army of AI agents probing for security vulnerabilities 24/7 – until something hits.

And this is just early days..."

The Demarcation Line

It's becoming very clear who is on which side – and where the interests of the powerful lie. Clearly, against the people.

On the prospect of a Data Center moratorium, Larry Fink of Blackstone fame swiftly came out to clear the air.

"If we have a moratorium of some sort in this country, we will be in a recession."

"So much of our economy is based on the buildout of this capex."

"If we don’t build out these data centers, it is actually more inflationary because the cost to compute is so high right now."

"The faster we can build out more data centers, the more compute we have, the faster we can bring down the cost."

Larry is clearly talking his own book – but if you're blindly long Big AI and the Wealth Effect, read this 👇

Conclusion

The chasm between the interests of Big AI (and its satellites), and The People is only growing wider.

I expect this to result in events that would hurt those who blindly extrapolate the present into the future, and allow their biases to shape their expectations.

More to say on the subject of The People Vs Big AI, but we will stop here for now.