This op-ed explores power and narrative dynamics around AI. Drawing on pop-culture references, the professional experiences of the author and examples from 2023’s “Great AI Safety Hype Roadshow,” this piece draws on the literary criticism technique of practical criticism to consider how speeches and announcements from both Silicon Valley executives and research scientists to interrogate the media-friendly nature of p(doom) discourse—which focuses on the existential risks of AI (PauseAI, 2023)—and its likely consequences. The complexities of AI and its numerous social impacts can be difficult for even the most expert analyst to unpack. In spite of this, the potential of “existential threats” has successfully cut through to become a mainstay of mainstream media coverage over the last year. This piece will make the case that this is an effective narrative conceit that has achieved a number of ends that traditional science communication tends to find difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Firstly, it is easy to understand. Simplification of this nature—that removes jargon and complexity and focuses on a single outcome—is much easier to fit on a TV rolling news ticker or on the cover of a tabloid newspaper than more well-balanced, representative opinions. Secondly, it inherits prior assumptions from well-known dramatic forms. P(doom) plays to stories familiar from Greek tragedy through to Marvel movies, in which lone male heroes battle ineluctable forces. Thirdly, it is imbued with urgency and so becomes difficult to ignore.
Your Favorite Science YouTubers Are Wrong About AI, (e.g. SciShow, Kurzgesagt, and Kyle Hill )
Why We Fear AI: On the Interpretation of Nightmares — Common Notions Press
Industry insiders Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer dive into the dark, twisted world of AI to demystify the many nightmares we have about it. They combine expertise in cognitive science and machine learning with political and economic analyses to cut through the hype and technobabble to show how fear
An AI Upheaval Is Coming for Media. This Journalist Is Already All In.
AI-assisted stories accounted for nearly 20% of Fortune’s web traffic in the second half of 2025. Most are written by Nick Lichtenberg.
Stewarding the stories that power tries to silence
"2026 will mark the rise of algorithmic witnessing — a movement that uses AI not to replace journalists, but to extend the reach of the communities they serve."
Refusing to accept an AI-poisoned future of journalism
Humans, however flawed, are
The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work
AI is not going to save media companies, and forcing journalists to use AI is not a business model.
Dario Amodei — The Urgency of Interpretability
In the decade that I have been working on AI, I’ve watched it grow from a tiny academic field to arguably the most important economic and geopolitical issue in the world. In all that time, perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned is this: the progress of the underlying technology is inexorable, driven by forces too powerful to stop, but the way in which it happens—the order in which things are built, the applications we choose, and the details of how it is rolled out to society—are eminently possible to change, and it’s possible to have great positive impact by doing so. We can’t stop the bus, but we can steer it. In the past I’ve written about the importance of deploying AI in a way that is positive for the world, and of ensuring that democracies build and wield the technology before autocracies do. Over the last few months, I have become increasingly focused on an additional opportunity for steering the bus: the tantalizing possibility, opened up by some recent advances, that we could succeed at interpretability—that is, in understanding the inner workings of AI systems—before models reach an overwhelming level of power.
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AI FOR EPISTEMICS & COORDINATION
Civilization and technology have radically improved the human condition. Nonetheless, the world sometimes goes in directions which essentially nobody would prefer — e.g., nuclear arms races, unexpected financial crashes, predatory marketing, or ubiquitous political misinformation.
Claude Fable 5 and new safety fables
One step further into the power politics of frontier AI systems.
Black Hat USA 2026: The 'Breaking' News: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident
Black Hat USA 2026: The 'Breaking' News: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident
Black Hat USA 2026: The 'Breaking' News: The OpenAI–Hugging Face Incident
An End-to-End View of AI Safety
In this blog, Rachel Coldicutt OBE, Executive Director, Careful Industries discusses our newly published literature review on the safe adoption of artificial intelligence in engineered systems.
I‘m far from an AI doomer, but it is amazing how many serious voices — on LinkedIn, no less! — are sharing stories about how AI slop is quickly becoming one of the top problems they see in academic writing and research “AI will 10x our research!” doesn’t seem to be surviving encounters with reality
I‘m far from an AI doomer, but it is amazing how many serious voices — on LinkedIn, no less! — are sharing stories about how AI slop is quickly becoming one of the top problems they see in academic writing and research “AI will 10x our research!” doesn’t seem to be surviving encounters with reality
interesting to see them citing the meta-crisis and failure to address it as a prime reason for moving on - "our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences" raising meta-crisis awareness among AI researchers is a great way to reduce x-risk 👍 >
norvid_studies
another one for the scrapbook @gracekind.net
