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Comment by jackb4040 | Hacker News Reader

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jackb4040

https://archive.ph/BzBjZ

Read the article. The things the Chinese officials are worried about are:

* Fake videos / disinformation

* Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure

* Data leaks

* Advances in military sensing / targeting technology

These concerns have little in common with the Yudkowskian / apocalyptic doom marketing the US hyperscalers are pushing now. The Times even says this explicitly in the second paragraph of the article:

> "The unusually blunt assessment by Chen Yixin, the head of China’s Ministry of State Security, is IN CONTRAST TO the warnings dominating the A.I. debate in the United States, which have focused on the possibility that A.I. could slip out of human control or pose a threat to humanity itself"

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Read the article.

I did, thanks. I don't need you to tell me to do that.

The common thread is that they both see AI as a threat. It's a different threat to each side, but still a threat.

Just because they see different threats from AI doesn't mean that AI isn't a threat.

If one person wants to paint the house red and another person wants to paint the house blue doesn't mean the house doesn't need to be painted.

"I was kind of leaning toward thinking all the talk of doom was a bunch of self-serving regulatory-capture hype"

"Just because they see different threats from AI doesn't mean that AI isn't a threat"

Why would you make it so blatantly obvious you're acting in bad faith? Do you think the people who post here are stupid?

I really have no idea what you're talking about.

With that level of snap hostility toward strangers online, maybe talk to your doctor about upping your meds.

You made a literally fake post and all replies to it are pointing that out. You haven't made a substantive reply to either.

Thinking AI is an existential threat to humanity because it will take over the world and thinking AI is a non-existential threat because it makes disinformation and hacking easier are not even remotely the same thing.

It's about as much of a common thread as comparing Shohei Ohtani to a loan-shark's enforcer because they both swing bats at things.

Lol

I love the metaphor, but it's a bit limited because the fake and real "threat" categories aren't just unrelated, they are opposites. The fake ones are all the AI boosters talk about, the real ones they would never talk about. The fake ones pump their stock price, whereas the real ones undermine it.

The thing is all the above are threats.

The internet being filled with more trash than ever is a threat to our sanity.

The anti-social posts mass generated by AI is a threat to our societies.

Bullshit news stories is a threat to our political processes and democracy.

Smart cameras every are a threat to our privacy and freedom.

AI enabled scams are a threat to our wallets.

AI hacking is a threat to anything connected along with infrastructure.

Military applications of AI are a threat to everyone.

Ever increasing intelligence in agentic AI will eventually be a threat to our entire species.

All are true at the same time.

Real threats that are happening to regular people already, vs marketing "threats" that the technology is too powerful / valuable.

The fact that you are chiming in to say you don't understand the difference between these 2 distinct categories of threats is fine, we can work on that. But the person who posted the article originally not only acknowledges the distinction, they falsely presented the article as evidence of non-western support for the latter category, even though both the Chinese official and the western reporter directly contradict that claim immediately at the beginning of the article.

I think it's interesting that the top of your list is "internet (social media) being filled with trash".

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