I get into my car to drive to campus most mornings happy, well-rested, and looking forward to teaching. Then I flip on CNN, and the day gets recalibrated fast.
This week’s playlist: an Anthropic researcher resigned, saying flatly that the people building AI believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade — four years from now. The company’s own alignment lead didn’t dispute it; he put the odds at better than ten percent. Add in reporting on military leadership upheaval, a war dragging on with no resolution and weapons running low, an energy crunch that could get much worse, and a trade war with Canada, one of our oldest allies. Not exactly a calm backdrop for anyone trying to build something.
