We greet the news that AI could extinguish us with a glazed indifference. What is the way out of this nihilism? | Brigid Delaney
TL;DR
In a Guardian column, Brigid Delaney describes a strange collective shrug: news that AI could wipe out humanity is being met with glazed indifference. Imagining the future as almost entirely bleak has crept into the collective mood this year. She recounts a coffee with an old friend who, while talking about what his children wanted to study, suddenly said he wished he had never had them.
Nauti's Take
The column offers an opportunity the current safety debate often misses: it shifts attention from abstract doom scenarios to what a good life alongside AI actually looks like. The risk of indifference is real, because people who give up leave the rules and direction to the handful of companies building the models.
A column is no substitute for policy, though. Anyone rolling out AI at work or at home should weigh meaning and wellbeing alongside speed and efficiency.
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