How real is the AGI threat?

In a 2023 interview, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, expressed his fears that artificial general intelligence could either save or destroy humanity.

If the CEO of Ford or Boeing publicly admitted that their cars or planes might become a self-governing threat to humanity, law enforcement would have shut down their factories immediately.

Breaking news would flood the airwaves, with helicopter footage capturing police vehicles pursuing the fleeing executives.

Military tanks would surround their factories, and the President of the United States would announce an immediate nationwide ban on all cars and planes, triggering a worldwide halt of all vehicles.

Social media would explode with viral videos of people burning their cars. Meanwhile, frustrated airline passengers would be seen desperately climbing onto the wings of planes, trying to dismantle them by force.

Instead, nothing happened. The CEO of the world’s leading AI company calmly admitted on national television that his company could destroy humanity, and life carried on as usual.

We are suffering from a widespread failure of imagination, which prevents us from reacting proportionally to the warnings and risk assessments of our own experts.