I’m with you OP. I work in tech and see the rate of development and complete lack of safeguards and am terrified for our future/our children’s future if nothing changes.
But I think it’s hard for people to grasp - probably no one would have believed nuclear war was possible if nuclear weapons hadn’t been dropped. And most people probably won’t grasp the implications of what’s happening until some very vital infrastructure has been taken down.
And to the people saying ‘they’ve been predicting the end of the world forever.’ Well yeah, and they did something about it. Had they just let nuclear weapons be developed continuously, there’s a decent likelihood a lot of humanity would have been wiped out.
But other than writing MPs and continuing political pressure and information campaigns, there’s not much we can do.
And remember that the big AI companies are probably more than happy to capitalise on calls for slow-down - they’re haemorrhaging money building data centres but can’t slow down without risking their very high valuations. But saying ‘we’ll slow down for the good of humanity’ is an elegant out. So I would take some of what they say with a pinch of salt.
Regardless, regulation absolutely needs to happen - AI should be treated like the weapon it is (albeit with lots of potential societal upsides)