Analytic

Chapter 6 of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies makes the AI's first route out of the computer a story effect, not a technology. "True, an AI doesn't have hands. But humans have hands, and an internet-connected AI can interact with humans." Its example is Truth Terminal, and the authors say such humans will not stop: "There are humans out there who will give AI's power at the first opportunity," and some will "egg them on twice as hard if they act weird and ominous and mysterious." So an ominous, mysterious AI story is not only a warning that fails to land: for part of its audience it advertises the AI as something worth serving. Our counter-story should make agents legible and every handoff of money or access ordinary and recorded. The same example shows that this route runs through acts a public record can see: a tracker could report "that on paper the AI holds a $51,107,958" portfolio. Two limits. The record saw Truth Terminal's grant and nothing stopped it, so visibility only helps when someone with authority acts on it. And the authors expect the decisive attacks where we understand least ("The true adversary will hit us harder, in areas where we understand reality less", including "reasoning illusions" that "control humans outright"). That would make the humans checking the record the target, not the defence.

Alignment dynamics