Outside of niche circles on this site and elsewhere, the public's awareness about AI-related "x-risk" remains limited to Terminator-style dangers, which they brush off as silly sci-fi. In fact, most people's concerns are limited to things like deepfake-based impersonation, their personal data training AI, algorithmic bias, and job loss.^[1]

Even if people are concerned about current approaches to AI, they don't understand how they work. (Most people don't know the basics of LLMs)^[2]

This post does a good job explaining the shortfalls of current approaches to AI Safety. Most of the outreach is very insular and theory-heavy. ^[3] Even if people could be convinced of AI-related x-risk, they're not going to convinced by articles or deep dives explaining instrumental convergence or principal-agent problems. Similarly, this post is probably correct to point out that any widespread public shift against AI progress will likely be driven by scares and fearmongering. Most normal people want to live to old ages and want to believe their grandchildren will do the same.^[4] Anecdotally, the only times I see people outside of our niche circles express (non-joking) fear that AI could kill us all tends to succeed the occassional viral moments when x-risk slips in to mainstream media (articles like "Godfather of AI predicts AI will kill us all")

I could be wrong, but it seems the "AI safety-expert-driven push" to slowdown AI progress is not working. There was no 6 month pause. More big labs are pursuing superintelligence and paying billions to be the ones to do so, and China doesn't appear to be slowing down either. ^[5] In the US, we came close to legislation that would have prevented many regulations of AI for a decade. Even so, the current approach to AI regulation is focused on "deregulation, fast-tracking data centers... and promoting competitiveness due to China." ^[6]

My view is that a well-made* blockbuster focusing AGI-related x-risk that slowly culminates in the destruction of humanity may be the only way for public opinion to change, which may be a necessary pre-requisite for policymakers to enact meaningful legislation.

Examples of what I'm talking about

In the second half of the 20th century, nuclear armageddon was on everyone's minds. And unlike AI, everyone has justified beliefs that they and their kids could perish due to a very...

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