“Politics Gets Interested In Those Trying Not To Die” by Zvi

This was the month the world took notice that AI might kill everyone.

Jacob Coxon's resignation set off a preference cascade. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote that we must pace the frontier. Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis agreed.

We were filled with hope. Perhaps we could agree to some basic safety measures, starting with embedded evaluators, pass some basic regulations and guardrails and otherwise start to act sensibly. Politicians on both sides took notice and were saying sensible things. The usual suspects and their armies of vibe comment bros were objecting, but the change was remarkable.

Then, largely motivated by a combination of Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg and David Sacks instilling paranoia and fears of economic problems, Trump went full ‘hoax’ on existential risk, conflating existential risk with the attacks on data centers and treating it as a plot (by the central creators of AI?) to take down AI rather than obviously genuine concern that AI might kill everyone.

In the days since, Trump has doubled down, and has compelled smart others in the White House to echo various nonsensical talking points.

You may not be interested in politics. But when you [...]

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Outline:

(01:39) The American People Really Hate AI

(02:41) The Voyages of Donald Trump

(06:08) American Intelligence

(10:34) And You May Ask Yourself

(14:39) It's All About the Data Centers

(16:53) JD Vance, Michael Kratsios and Collective Action Problems

(23:16) Josh Hawley

(24:47) Suggesting Not Dying Gets You Sued For Antitrust

(28:29) Other Government Officials Say Sane Things

(28:36) Senator John Curtis (R-Utah)

(29:32) Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana

(31:17) Barack Obama

(33:05) Yassamin Ansari

(33:46) AOC

(34:32) It's Rough Out There

(36:54) This Is Nothing

(39:06) The New York Post Tops Itself But Outright Breaks The Rules

(42:36) New York Post Runs Out of Steam

(47:18) If The Model Is Acting As Instructed And It Kills You That Is Not Fine

(49:10) AI-Written Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Lies About HuggingFace

(50:25) That's Bait

(52:31) I Clearly Cannot Choose The Wine In Front of Me

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First published:
September 22nd, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8eDaCvSRzzKCxKSEk/politics-gets-interested-in-those-trying-not-to-die

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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