In the United States, public sentiment against the rising power of AI labs and their CEOs is overwhelmingly negative.
As Wall Street Journal polling from late September found, 63 percent of US adults support an immediate pause on AI development, while a Politico survey found about two-thirds of Americans have at least “moderate” anxieties over AI destroying humanity.
When the scope of that public backlash first came into focus, tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg responded with some tone-deaf media stunts, hoping to win back hearts and minds by the millions. Now that this strategy has clearly failed, executives at top AI labs are starting to workshop standard operating procedures in the event of a massive revolt against them.
This includes leaders at Anthropic and OpenAI, according to Axios, which broke the story. These amount to Pentagon-style “war games,” essentially, with AI labs hammering out responses to hypothetical scenarios like massive cyberattacks enabled by their products, or a political revolt in reaction to some sort of catastrophic event triggered by their models.
Approached by Axios for comment, OpenAI was nonchalant about the whole affair, replying that “OpenAI conducts preparedness exercises where teams discuss and work through a range of potential scenarios.”
“These scenarios are not treated as inevitable, but are meant to help us prepare for a variety of circumstances,” the spokesperson continued.
Anthropic declined to comment, though anxiety about social unrest isn’t out of character for the company’s executives. In September, it was reported that Anthropic was building out a surveillance apparatus to keep tabs on anti-AI protest movements, which included taking a “pre-crime” approach to intelligence gathering.
How serious a threat any of this actually is remains hard to say. Nonetheless, the fact that top tech execs are even considering the possibility is notable — a sign that if nothing else, the anti-AI backlash has them squirming in their board room chairs.
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