But yes, MIT Medialab also took money, after the conviction, thus muddying her argument
(a) AI will replace all or nearly all human intellectual labour
(b) AI will achieve superintelligence and become a (hopefully benevolent) digital god
(c) AI will be a superweapon that defines the next era of warfare
(d) AI will render art and creativity obsolete
These are real arguments I have heard. I'm sure you have too. If any of them are true, even partly, would you really be shocked to see the people of the future looking back at us as a bunch of Chamberlains?
And would they judge us less harshly just because the people who wanted to end the economy, summon Cthulhu, build a nuke and kill art simply failed to achieve their goals? Is the goal itself not odious enough to condemn?
> the people who wanted to end the economy
People are still arguing about capitalism vs communism, even though the laissez faire capitalism that inspired literal communism ended with the New Deal and literal communism fell some time around the Berlin Wall (give or take when China became 'state capitalism' in practice if not name).
One thing is, I am confident, going to be true regardless of AI: for as long as humans are still around, we'll be arguing about the economy and what 'good' even means in that context.
Less of a quibble:
> (b) AI will achieve superintelligence and become a (hopefully benevolent) digital god
While supremely hubristic, is that really odious given the 'hopefully benevolent'?
Like, I don't believe in any god, but is this any more odious than someone simply praying for success to a god they do believe in?
I'm not saying he did it (how would I tell?), but Altman has absolutely been accused by his own sister.
And while Musk doesn't seem to have actually gone to that island, he did seem interested.
And one of the files did show Zuckerberg and Musk dining with Epstein.
And many of the big tech leadership did openly support Trump, despite the long list of things that now includes suspicious gaps in which of the Epstein files actually got published. (Even if theres a legit reason behind what remains hidden, promising to publish then failing is at best still a huge own-goal because "they have something to hide" is necessarily true and always sounds like it means "that they themselves did").
So, yeah, I can see it being that level of bad for at least several of the big names.
(There's also a lot of distaste for Anthropic; I'm not aware of anything of this category, but even without that it is easy to tar everyone with the same brush).
"AI Companies Prepare For Public Backlash After Potential Catastrophic Incident"[1] — https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/openai-anthropic-prepare-for...
"OpenAI’s Sam Altman Says World Should Accept 'Some Bad Things' From AI" — https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/10/04/openais...
Plus the dozens of existing cyberattacks initiated by OpenAI and Anthropic that were simply shrugged away by their leadership.
[1]: And there's a related Tweet I can't find right now, from an AI startup founder who agrees and encourages people to start prepping supplies.
Once shit really hits the fan, I expect a good majority of people will come to view AI as a toxic force that sows discord and saps the life out of everything they once enjoyed. They'll witness endless cyber warfare, all-enveloping disinformation campaigns, devaluation of art and culture, mass unemployment and unbelievable oligarchic consolidation, spam and enshittification at unprecedented levels, incredibly complex phishing and ransom schemes, every last bit of commercial human interaction turned over to bots, complete calorie-free information overload in exchange for... what, exactly? An improved Google search that confidently tells you the wrong thing? A digital avatar that makes trip planning marginally easier?
> This is our view as well. Relatedly, average people will want to increase their level of personal resilience and preparedness as their resources allow. We will be publishing about this soon... This is why I bought a bugout property towards the end of last year.
> I chose 7 years because I see certain parallels between the situation with researchers and Big AI today and the relationship between researchers and Epstein in 2019.
Look, I absolutely love Vi Hart's stuff. And I mean love love, and I have for almost 20 years.
But do people really believe this? That associating with AI companies, using their product, etc, is similar to taking money from a child sex trafficker?
I thought the original Mathathon sounded like a great idea. They shut that down, and I think the revised one seems like a half decent idea. But if I get involved in it, in 7 years it'll be the same as if I had been involved with Jeffrey Epstein?
I feel like the discourse on this is starting to get way out of control. I say that with no less love for Vi Hart's ideas than I have always had. But surely this technology can be used for some good?