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I was wondering about that exact situation. Being born in the mid-80s, the Cold War wasn't something I was around to feel, but nuclear war seemed like the closest precedent.

Was it something people talked about openly, or more like background noise everyone knew about and few mentioned? Were there "nuclear threat deniers" in your experience?

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Interestingly, pretty well everyone I've mentioned my own emotions about AI risk to is worried about it too. I don't think they'd be able to rationally express scenarios of the earth being tiled with data centres, but there is an ambient intuitive sense that this change is having impact. They don't really nitpick which impact I'm talking about either (there are lots of them).

I was a bit too young to really remember what adults felt and said about the cold war. By the 80s it felt slightly less scary I think than it would have in the 60s? There already being a nuclear hotline and SALT talks and other things learnt from the Cuban missile crisis. Fewer countries had nukes too.

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