The problem is that this type of analysis and evidence does not appeal to the same primal instinct that made The Terminator such a successful franchise in both

The problem is that this type of analysis and evidence does not appeal to the same primal instinct that made The Terminator such a successful franchise in both the box office and pop culture. It is way more fun to entertain ideas of paperclip optimizers and emotionally manipulative super-intelligent sociopaths than to actually reason in good faith. The endless comparisons to nuclear bombs or imagined super-viruses are an inevitable result of people having lived through the rampant propaganda of the cold war. The idea of just another technology controlled exclusively by mega-corps in a world where a majority of the most powerful technologies are controlled by those corps doesnt seem that bad in comparison with nuclear annihilation. This is missing the fundamental truth of what AI is and therefore missing its most direct comparison. At risk of repeating the same arguments seen elsewhere on HN and other sites: cryptology is definitely the closest comparison. Both AI and crypto are incredibly clever applications of fundamental mathematics. Both are technologies that are absolutely disruptive to certain monopolies or methods of societal control. Both can be replicated by anyone who understands the basic principles and throws enough resources at them. I think we are going to watch a similar thing happening where there are many concerted attempts to compromise the technology itself or the availability of said tech and eventually the halls of power are going to end up targeting endpoints instead of the protocol (architecture) itself. The users of a given technology are where regulation ought to (and I believe will) lie in the end.