Can AI really improve itself recursively until it becomes powerful enough to cause human extinction? Nobody sponsored this video, I turned down funding speci...
But what if there was a way for the AI companies to get government permission to violate antitrust law and cease to compete with one another, and secure a ban on the use of Chinese open weight models? Turns out, there is a way to call time on the Red Queen’s Race: merely insist that you are on the verge of teaching so many words to the word-guessing program that it will wake up and devour us all, and call for a ban on “superintelligence”:
Once the government stipulates that “superintelligence risk” is an existential crisis, it must grant the hyperscalers a consent decree absolving them from any violations of antitrust law stemming from a conspiracy to halt direct competition with one another:
Freaking out about “superintelligence” is a canonical example of “criti-hype,” where critics repeat boosters’ claims but append, “(and that’s bad)” to them:
The argument is, these companies cant be profitable as long as there is competition (from open or chinese models), so the US companies want those to be banned and be allowed to collude with each other to ramp up the money extraction without fear of consumers moving to other services.
I’m fond of the conspiracy theory that each of the AI companies has realized that revenues are not growing anywhere near fast enough to justify their spend rate, but none of them is willing to be the first to slow down and risk losing market mind-share. Government decree lets them stop their unsustainable growth without having to tell investors that their whole business model was unsustainable.
sick of this guy. Fine, the bond villains have a plethora of wish lists. We’re not forced to care about any of their ambitions to prevent AI destruction. They could achieve the same ambitions, by just parrotting NVidia: “No danger. Only cure for cancer. Must beat China, by making AI more expensive everywhere else to stop them from making their own AI”
I liked this take: https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/16/beggar-thy-neighbor/
An excerpt:
The argument is, these companies cant be profitable as long as there is competition (from open or chinese models), so the US companies want those to be banned and be allowed to collude with each other to ramp up the money extraction without fear of consumers moving to other services.
I’m fond of the conspiracy theory that each of the AI companies has realized that revenues are not growing anywhere near fast enough to justify their spend rate, but none of them is willing to be the first to slow down and risk losing market mind-share. Government decree lets them stop their unsustainable growth without having to tell investors that their whole business model was unsustainable.
Manufacturing consent for a bailout. I’m with you on this one.
sick of this guy. Fine, the bond villains have a plethora of wish lists. We’re not forced to care about any of their ambitions to prevent AI destruction. They could achieve the same ambitions, by just parrotting NVidia: “No danger. Only cure for cancer. Must beat China, by making AI more expensive everywhere else to stop them from making their own AI”