I am almost completely unconcerned about the “dangers” of AI that I’m hearing about.

In particular, I’m completely unconcerned about the danger that terrorists (or bored high school students) are going to use AI to make a bioweapon. I guess the concern is that AI will be able to try thousands of changes in the time a human could try three? That is different from what evolution has been doing for two billion years in no way whatsoever.

Similar only in that it is another AI danger that’s easily ameliorated, is AI-facilitated hacking, which the AI firms want us to come up with regulations for.

The fact is, we scarcely need any new regulations at all. Just an ordinary legal structure where, if someone using AI does something improper, the legal and criminal liability falls equally on the person prompting the AI and on the company that wrote the AI.

Of course, if the harm passes through someone else who’s supposed to be taking due care (such as your bank or broker) that person also has ordinary responsibility. (So if an AI helps someone steal your retirement account, the broker holding your retirement account has to make you whole, just as if they had handed your money over to someone who hadn’t used AI. About the only AI-related regulation needed is something making it clear that the broker can not only sue the criminal who stole it, but also the AI firm whose tool was used to effectuate the crime.)

My point is that all those supposed horrible dangers are perfectly ordinary, and there is no need to do anything special at all.

What’s really interesting is why are the AI firms and AI scientists trying to gin up all this worry? Could it be that they can see that without some buy-in from governments the companies are all going to collapse in short order?

That’s my best guess.