Cassandra warned the Trojans about the wooden horse – she was given the power to see the future, but was cursed that no one would believe her. In Silicon Valley’s version of this story, the Trojan horse is superintelligence, and its Cassandras warn that AI researchers are “gambling with our lives” in the race to build it.
But there’s a twist, Geoffrey Cain writes in this issue’s cover story.
The ending stays the same, but first, instead of ignoring the Cassandras, “the elders hear them out, agree with every word.” The people who most vocally proclaim that AI might kill us are also insisting that they must be the ones to “pace” its development. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei has said that AI development must slow down; OpenAI’s Sam Altman agrees, as does Elon Musk, who has warned that humanity is “summoning the demon.”
Investors give them billions to continue building their “safer” machines. And so the Trojan horse – slightly hobbled by regulation, accompanied by auditors – will trundle along, straight through the gates.
