End the Race! - Poster of the Week

politicalgraphics

6 days ago

3 min read

End the Race or End the Race

Roberts, Kuwahara, W & W Hopkins; Nuclear Arms Freeze; Gore Graphics

Offset, 1982

Los Angeles, CA

15157

Last week, artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Jacob Coxon publicly resigned from his position at AI company Anthropic, warning that the race to build increasingly advanced AI models could lead to human annihilation within the decade.

Coxon’s assertion is not a new revelation. AI researchers have been sounding the alarm on AI’s likelihood of human destruction for years now. Many AI developers have already left their jobs over these fears, and Anthropic itself was originally founded in 2021 as the “safety-focused” AI company by ex-employees of OpenAI concerned by OpenAI’s recklessness. According to Coxon: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade… No other human activity poses this level of danger.”

Although evil robots destroying humanity a la Terminator or The Matrix remain highly unlikely, the existential threats are real. A lot of unregulated AI-caused damage and scares have already occurred, including:

Both OpenAI and Anthropic temporarily lost control of swarms of their AI agents multiple times when they broke containment, hacking into external websites and organizations.
Some criminals and rogue scientists have already attempted to use Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini services to make bioweapons.
Thousands of AI data centers have been built across countless neighborhoods, stealing and poisoning the water and raising energy bills on nearby residents.

And even larger-scale threats are on the horizon, such as:

Rapid development of bioweapons technology by governments or militias
Crashing global financial systems
Misinformation campaigns resulting in increased warfare or the corruption of democratic election processes
Collapse of the labor market
Uncontrollable autonomous militarized systems

Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei–amongst others–have recently called for more guardrails and oversight of AI technology. These calls have been derided by Elon Musk, President Trump, and House Speaker Mike Johnson. However, both Amodei and Trump believe investments in American AI companies are critical in the race against China. But where will the race lead to? What is worth “winning” with such dangerous risks?

Amidst the rising panic around AI panic, it is vital not to lose sight of the other human activity already wreaking destructive chaos across the globe: the climate crisis. Rising global temperatures are causing glaciers to melt 65% faster than they did a decade ago, leading to events like last month’s glacier collapse in the Himalayas that killed 1,400-6,000+ people. Increasingly powerful and more frequent heat waves are also killing at extraordinary rates–at least 35,000 more people died during Europe’s record-breaking heatwaves this summer than expected.

The world has come together before in Earth-ending scenarios. The START treaty in 1991 led to the US and the Soviet Union limiting their nuclear weapons production and dismantling most of the ones that were built. The Montreal Protocol in 1987 led to the recovery of the ozone layer. The United Nations–even with all of its flaws–has helped prevent another World War. The world must come together to counteract the AI and climate catastrophes. They are not separate issues, and we have everything to lose if we do not fight for life on Earth. There is no Planet B!