Oren Cass has a very smart essay on how to respond to the AI doom scenarios with what we’ve learned from the environmental catastrophists:
The experts and activists, focused on the technical reality of global temperatures or LLM capabilities as a direct proxy for risk and damage, see the only response as mitigation. In the climate context, this means reducing greenhouse gas emissions to slow the rise in temperatures. In the AI context, it would mean slowing the progress of model capabilities. Those policies have their place. Moving to lower-emissions technology has many benefits. So does advancing AI research at a speed that labs can understand and manage.
But for the most part, the mediating layers between the technical reality and the human reality offer the best sites for policy intervention through adaptation. The exception that proves the rule, a meteor strike, presents the case where adaptation is impossible and mitigation imperative; humanity should be investing much more to ensure foolproof detection and deflection capabilities. (Maybe with AI we will do so.)
Read the whole thing.