Import AI 431: Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece for The Torment Nexus about the threat of AI, and more specifically what some call "artificial general intelligence" or AGI, which is a shorthand term for something that approaches human-like intelligence. As I tried to point out in that piece, even

I find it fascinating whenever Anthropic in particular comes out with either a new AI model or a note about what it has learned about an existing model, because the responses almost always fall into one of two camps: the first is the "Oh my god, we're all going to