The Stories We Tell

Last week, in an incident dubbed Black October, AI agent software was leveraged by hackers to expose critical security vulnerabilities in a staggering number of large organizations and websites. According to the Wall Street Journal, “organizations scrambled to patch newly uncovered bugs that could allow takeover of as many as 70% of the world’s websites. Hackers are now actively trying to break into websites by leveraging these flaws, Amazon.com says.”Anthropic’s Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, Jason Clinton, took to X to say that things are going to get worse before they get better, and it’s up to the world to clean up after the mess the AI industry has created. Replies to this tweet were furious, telling Clinton that he should be in jail for creating this monster. Clinton snarkily replied that “it was always going to be this way. We tried to warn the world.”This is exactly the sort of abdicating responsibility that we’ve come to expect from Silicon Valley, as if because they told us their technology was dangerous is enough to let them off the hook. It also plays into the framing of AI as what Eryk Salvaggio described as a “system from nowhere.”Instead of focusing on the design decisions that made incidents like OpenAI’s hacking of Hugging Face possible, the media has grasped onto the AI industry’s preferred narrative, where AI agents go “rogue” seemingly all on their own. This means that despite OpenAI’s clear recklessness, incompetence, and criminal negligence in basic cybersecurity, they have yet to face any real consequences.To dive into this story, I spoke with Eryk Salvaggio, who has been doing some essential work in debunking the mythology surrounding AI while explaining what actually happens in these stories of AI “going rogue.” Eryk is a Gates scholar getting his PhD in Critical AI and Digital Humanities from the University of Cambridge and is a writing fellow for Tech Policy Press. He also writes an excellent blog called Cybernetic Forests.Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/89rIlEtEwX0SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST: https://www.thestorieswetell.co/s/the-stories-we-tellPATREON: https://patreon.com/TheStoriesWeTell303SUBSTACK: https://www.thestorieswetell.co/TIP JAR: https://buymeacoffee.com/thestorieswetellBLUESKY: https://bsky.app/profile/storieswetell303.bsky.socialINSTA: https://www.instagram.com/thestorieswetell303/TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@thestorieswetell303EMAIL: [email protected] FAVE BOOKS: https://bookshop.org/shop/thestorieswetell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Keep your browsing private with a VPN that actually works. Get Proton VPN today for up to 70% off at https://protonvpn.com/thestorieswetell.There is a way to understand both sides of the AI utopia/apocalypse dichotomy. A bizarre ideology that has finally started to get the critical attention it deserves for its perverse worldview that seeks to demolish democracy in favor of their exclusionary utopia, whether the rest of the world wants it or not. It is a deeply anti-human worldview that sees humans as “biological bootladers” for digital superintelligence, a mere stepping stone toward their techno-capitalist fantasies of infinite growth.Emile P. Torres was a true believer in this ideology for ten years, and after seeing it for the cult that it was, left the movement and became one of its harshest and most prolific critics. They, along with computer scientist Tinmit Gebru, explained that the movement was rooted in eugenics with their TESCREAL thesis, which I think is one of the least understood, yet most vital theories for explaining the AI race in the US. Unfortunately, far too many on the left don’t understand it and even platform its many adherents. Bernie Sanders, bless his heart, has been fully doomer-pilled and is taking advice from supposed “experts” like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, and has allowed their sci-fi delusions to drive policy proposals.Watch on YouTube & see sources: https://youtu.be/tQQWJUSsEgkEmile's Newsletter: https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST: https://www.thestorieswetell.co/s/the-stories-we-tellPATREON: https://patreon.com/TheStoriesWeTell303SUBSTACK: https://www.thestorieswetell.co/TIP JAR: https://buymeacoffee.com/thestorieswetellSECOND CHANNEL: @ShortStoriesWeTell BLUESKY: https://bsky.app/profile/storieswetell303.bsky.socialINSTA: https://www.instagram.com/thestorieswetell303/TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@thestorieswetell303EMAIL: [email protected] FAVE BOOKS: https://bookshop.org/shop/thestorieswetell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.