Comment by _heimdall
3 hours ago
Two birds with one stone.
They would be convincing the government these tools are extremely powerful, the government reads that as a potential weapon. They're also convincing the government its so dangerous the industry needs heavy regulation.
Investors read that as (a) the government would be a huge customer and (b) the government would be regulation in a way that prevents further competition and may deem the companies too big to fail, both making these safer investments rather than riskier ones.
Again, you could just as easily argue that if investors believe the technology is dangerous, it's therefore not ready for prime time and will not see widespread industry adoption, therefore less promising for investment. Also this line of reasoning could easily lead to nationalization, which could certainly harm investors, to say the least.
This "stunt" story is like an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine which requires a bunch of things to go just right. I haven't seen any evidence that stock prices even move in a favorable direction when these announcements come out. If anything, the opposite.
Motte and Bailey.
Motte (easy to defend claim) : asking for regulation might serve both purposes
Bailey (hard to defend claim) : companies are conspiring to make AI look way more powerful than it is and AI is actually not that powerful. They are just trying to hype up the stock valuation of their companies.
> companies are conspiring to make AI look way more powerful than it is
The former explanation may be the more accurate one, but I'd be shocked if the top leaders in these labs aren't doing this at some level. We know that almost all of them are in communication at least occasionally, and their public PR stories align much too quickly to truly be coincidence.