One signal

Geoffrey Hinton has converted another relaxed reader, and the method is the interesting part. The editor of the Australian publication Pearls and Irritations writes in a 16 September message that until this week every alarming AI story seemed offset by a useful one.

Why it matters

Hinton's radio interview ended that. The 10 per cent extinction odds he calls 'not unreasonable' get a mention, but the persuader is the present tense: systems threatening blackmail if switched off, and developing 'all the kind of weaselly things that nasty people develop'. His summary: 'we have to figure out how it never wants to.' The editor's answer is government, community and industry building robust controls together. That is a column, not a policy programme, but it shows how far the warnings have travelled: what persuades now is what AI already does.

Discuss: If present-tense misbehaviour like blackmail threats persuades sceptics faster than extinction percentages, should safety advocates lead with observed behaviour rather than forecasts?

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