Comment by threecheese
12 hours ago
Given you view this through the lens of your personal covid narrative (no shade): for a moment, steel-man the idea that the crippling response prevented a more plague-like scenario - it's inarguable that the thing loved to mutate, and that people love to panic, and *it easily could have been*.
Considering how much of our critical infrastructure is not only digital but internet-accessible, and we have potential uncontrolled swarms of stupid-but-superintelligent chaotic-neutral speed-hackers, you don't see why people are concerned?
There's a reason we have computer crime laws; this digital shit, it's like real now, man.
It has nothing to do with my personal lens on Covid. You can believe the exact opposite of me, and still agree with my point, which is that it could have been lab made, and it could have been far, far worse. It’s an exercise in risk-scoping.
But sorta-kinda related to your point, the thing that scares me about AI is the same thing that scared me about Covid: panicky humans do dumbass things, and it doesn’t take much to panic a bunch of humans in a group. The people who are still saying, in 2026, with all of our retrospective knowledge of the harm we did to ourselves, that it might have been better if the government had only pressed the boot a little harder, scare the crap out of me.
Those same people are hard at work on this panic, too.