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?

  • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    How will “AI kill us all”? I can see it creating harm and getting people out of jobs. But kill us??

    • Tarambor@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      How will “AI kill us all”? I can see it creating harm and getting people out of jobs. But kill us??

      There are currently 120 dead Iranian schoolgirls as a result of AI targetting and it using 10 year old out of data data.

      The IDF have been using AI for target selection in the Gaza war.

      There’s been a story this week where AI was used by the US military in analysis of a Chinese cargo ship and concluded it was carrying nuclear weaponry components to Iran. The US military were planning on boarding the vessel which would be considered an act of war. Only a last minute analysis of the intelligence revealed it was false.

    • CovfefeKills@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Developing new viruses and deadly diseases that spread too fast to be cured. By enabling low cost sensors to resolve messy data for low cost high precision weapons. By eroding the skillset of humanity so that we just fail in a few generations. By accelerating how we were already killing ourselves.

  • Stolas@lemmy.ca
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    16 hours ago

    So apparently we’re using up all our resources in order to create something that might kill us all.

    Sounds like a fantastic idea.

    I’m going to go cry now.

  • kablez@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    AI isn’t a danger to humanity, per se. Humans abandoning their duties of being responsible stewards of systems is a genuine source of danger though.

    We already have algorithmic abuse where people are subjugated by welfare and debt systems with little oversight or flexibility. Some organisations even breaking the law and going against their stated missions to achieve goals and maintain order.

    Social murder is the concept that society can kill a person through stress, pressure, abandonment and indifference to the individuals struggles and needs. We’re seeing a lot of it today with the declining health of younger people being especially alarming.

    AI can scale the two things I’ve mentioned beyond limits set by current bureaucratic systems, I.e. the slowness of people running a system. Systems which already kill and harm people without AI. The small erroneous tendencies of logic and algorithms in systems will be scaled up, further and faster. AI can enable algorithmic abuse and social murder on scales comparable to mass murder.

  • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    They want regulation to create a cartel. Failing that they want hysteria to increase pre IPO valuations.

    As Patrick Boyle said. It would be like Coca Cola, Pepsi and Irn Bru getting together to beg for regulations because their soft drinks are just too delicious.

    • mkwt@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      What’s going to happen is:

      • The big players know that the token pricing crisis is coming up.
      • When the price increases hit, regular users are going to scramble for alternatives.
      • Local models will be an attractive alternative for many users. The cost of hardware and energy will constrain local model power, but many will be willing to live with it.
      • So these would-be cartel members want to hit the local and open weight models with the “safety” card. Otherwise they might be holding the bag on all of those data centers.

      “You see, it’s just too dangerous to humanity to experiment with AI at home. You need to use a safe provider like Open AI.”

      • Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works
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        20 hours ago

        eventually someone’s just gonna sell cloud computing at a competitive price through a free model and obliterate anthropic and openai. it’ll be like ISP, AOL was the hottest company in the world at one point with a “locked down ecosystem” and now it’s just a tiny brand with a tiny but loyal customer base of senior citizens.

        • Ostfriesentee@feddit.org
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          13 hours ago

          Isn’t that what Mistral is kinda pivoting towards? I think they now also host third-party models. That’s essentially providing cloud computing for open-source models. Not entirely sure.

  • weps@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    it’s pretty disrupting tech, not without risk. general population is behind on the real capabilities of AI and tech companies are doing smart marketing which gives a big spread in perception.

  • Taldan@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    If someone stands to benefit financially from the idea their AI is so powerful that is scary, they’re probably going to bullshit about how powerful it is

    • Goldmage263@sh.itjust.works
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      18 hours ago

      Which in turn has a prophetic effect of them getting more money, AI using more resources, and pushing everything worse.

  • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    I’ve heard a few explanations for the “AI will kill us all” narrative.

    1. AI techies are in a cult. They genuinely believe this stuff because they’re crazy.

    2. It makes the AI sound powerful and impressive, which is ultimately good for the AI companies.

    3. They’re starting to face competition from open-weight models, so they want to scare politicians into crafting regulations. They think that they will be able to influence the regulations to favor them and squeeze out their competition.

    And, of course, there’s

    1. It keeps people talking about AI. Because whatever you do, don’t quit talking about AI, because if you quit talking about it, the line might go down! And the line going down is very, very bad.
    • Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 day ago

      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.

      • bthest@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        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.worldOP
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          1 day ago

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

    • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      I am in a cult, the cult of the machine god. Use your imagination for a second, trillions of dollars spent on this technology for A: Greed and random speculation B: Rich people really want this to control you better. C: a handful of tech CEOs are running the worlds largest grift. D: The machine god was awoken years ago and we’re building data centers at its behest.

  • BilSabab@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    It’s good to see Doomsday Cults back in vogue. Too bad Robert Anton Wilson is not around.

  • blitzen@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    The people claiming it’s humanity ending are all directly involved in the AI companies. One take is that they are the ones that know the most about it.

    My take is they are financially incentivized in making sure their investments grow in value.

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    18 hours ago

    Were definitely in the worse timeline of dominant reactions to this story.

    First, you are completely right to mistrust the bond villains and politicians for all prescription/solutions to this problem.

    The experts and their bond villain bosses warning of a danger is something you should believe is a danger. Those telling to invest $Ts because there is no danger are the bigger liars. Still, the bond villains continue training full speed, and have $Bs in budgets to do harm with models 1 year ahead of public releases, and their “freedom loving angel government” will pay them $Ts to help oppress Americans, and kill/oppress rest of world.

    It is outright suicidal to dismiss the power of these tools by comparing it to an AGI stawman status, and suicidal to think any publicly discussed solutions have any tangential relationship to diminishing the real dangers. Guardrails/killswitches on public released models is security theater relative to the real threats to us all.

    Making the world a better place to live by making your nation a better place to live, that creates an arm race of prosperity and better governance is the only path to saving humanity, because LLMs/AI/automation are out of the bag and will continue their improvement. Governments that pursue geopolitical supremacy by throwing all of your money at them is them purposefully harming you. https://naturalfinance.blogspot.com/2026/09/a-global-prosperity-manifesto.html

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Personally, this just feels like marketing and these big asshole companies trying to resurrect the 2025 level of hype in order to salvage their IPO’s.

    If they honestly believed this I can’t imagine that their workers wouldn’t do something more drastic.

  • MrOtingocni@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    ‘Sensationalist hooey, cooked by superstitious yokels seeing phantoms of their own imagining.’

  • dropdrip@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    There’s blood on their hands. Either they keep the hype up or go to jail regardless of any of their statements being true or not.

  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    I knew a guy in high school that told girls they shouldn’t date him because his dick was so big it would hurt them. You can wax philosophical on his motives if you’d like, but spoiler alert - his dick wasn’t big.

    • adhdsergio@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      That’s exactly what I think is happening. Remember a few months ago anthropic saying mythos is too dangerous to release until the government as the idiots they are starting believing them and banned them from exporting it, therefore losing them money. Very quickly they came up with fable (ironic name isn’t it) a week or two later saying it’s got the proper safeguards now. Now they’re all trying this marketing strategy asking the gov to regulate them, seemingly because they’re dangerous and not because they’re getting diminishing returns and feel threatened by the chinese competition

    • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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      2 days ago

      Your username with that conclusion paints a very funny picture.

      • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        Strong doubt.

        High school girls don’t want that. They don’t want big dicks, or to talk to guys who brag about their dicks, or show their dicks, or send pictures of their dicks. Gooner graduated a virgin.