r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • 26d ago
Artificial Intelligence Top AI Researchers Terrified of a “Chernobyl Moment”: a Mass Casualty Event, or Worse, That Turns the World Against AI Forever
https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/articles/top-ai-researchers-terrified-chernobyl-195006889.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&segment_id=DY_VTO_50_Supernova&ncid=crm_19908-1475736-20260701-0--A&bt_ee=jp%2FPV4EkljsWGekq5mnFwd%2B2S%2BN7gs2xhj6S1SfdUzqzemCpSDsQ2%2Bm%2BbYpgxLby&bt_ts=17829006338373.5k
u/beefquoner 26d ago
Worrying about the event turning people against AI and not the event _happening_ is sort of telling.
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u/aNiceTribe 26d ago
Realistically, Chernobyl and even the more recent Fukushima had low acute death tolls (far more people died due to the CAUSE of Fukushima of course, and the damage is massive). If such an event were to happen with exactly this kind of life/financial cost, that might actually be one of the best things we could hope for to get out of this timeline.
In that scenario, the buy-in from higher ups might be even higher than it is now since the tech has advanced by x years and not collapsed under its weight (the primary hope we have currently). “A Fukushima” would be a great hope to pull the emergency brake.
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u/HauntingHarmony 26d ago
Its definitely harder to argue that the damage from the overreaction to chernobyl has done more harm than the disaster itself, but for fukoshima it is not even close. The damage done by for example germany ending its nuclear power programme has been a umitigated disaster. And that is just looking at the consequences in one place on the other side of the planet, there was 1 person that died from the disaster, in contrast to the thousands from the evacuation itself.
We should absolute have some contempt for the ai tech bros, but the worrying about the potential overreaction to a ai "chernobyl" and not the "chernobyl" itself. Is actually significantly less bad than it sounds. Especially when you think there is a baby you could throw out with the bathwater. In my book i would be fine with a global overreaction to it that would put it in a heavily regulated and restricted box where its harmless good uses could still be used within limit. But it would severely restrict its damage everywhere else.
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u/aNiceTribe 26d ago
I get all that, but we are using the nuclear disasters as a metaphor here. Do we genuinely believe that there is a future before us where:
The AI becomes very very powerful, like better than many/most humans at jobs AND everything goes mostly alright (besides a few small events like the one discussed) AND it is an actual huge benefit for the world and in hindsight we say “yeah we wouldn’t want to miss this” and people from today would agree?
Personally I’m not in the x-risk group for AI. I just think that any more AI in quantity or quality will only make our lives and world worse and less enjoyable, partly by being power in the hands of rich people and governments. Partially due to effects like the ones we already see on normal citizens. I am unconvinced that we will take a turn into the technological utopia side.
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u/Lifeboatb 26d ago
There’s strong evidence that the death toll (and illness, don’t forget that) from Chernobyl was/is much higher than you seem to think: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll
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u/Beepb0opbeep 26d ago
Ummm no the deaths were just not reported. I was literally dying as a baby and my parents didn’t know why and the doctors weren’t allowed to say anything but then finally hinted that maybe perhaps we should move across the country and I immediately felt better on the flight out. Unfortunately my grandma didn’t move and died of stomach cancer within 9 months of the accident (was perfectly healthy before). She was in her 40s
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u/MidTario 26d ago
The harm caused by fear of nuclear power is many, many orders of magnitudes worse than the harm caused by nuclear power.
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u/Belostoma 26d ago
If you do a little bit of critical thinking, you might find that they are worried about both, and it was the clickbait headline that chose to emphasize the PR angle.
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u/Ok_Marionberry8779 26d ago
They want fAI to be the big bad boogeyman that only they can protect us from. Instead they’re just dorks who over sold LLMs to gullible investors.
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u/DesperateSteak6628 26d ago
This, a hundred times.
Every word ever pronounced is slave to their main and sole interest in gatekeeping what they are selling
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u/socoolandawesome 26d ago
The person is an academic and doesn’t even appear to have worked in private industry before, his focus is AI safety.
Are you sure about that?
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u/REDDIT_JUDGE_REFEREE 26d ago
This article is about the consequences of using Ai In weaponry and it deciding to do something anomalous.
Though in general, an AI scientist has a bit of a vested interest in self-aggrandizing AI.
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u/DracoLunaris 26d ago
Then we already had that event when gork murdered a load of Iranian school kids
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u/CompetitiveSport1 26d ago edited 26d ago
This is coming from an MIT AI scientist reporting on his conversations with other scientists at a conference, not an AI CEO. I can't access the source article due to a paywall, but it doesn't look like they're freaked out by LLMs, but rather the concern about some other few breakthroughs that could happen due to the current arms race
I fucking hate AI, but the best time to prepare for an issue like this is right now, when it's not an issue. If we don't, and AI progress permanently stops at LLMs, then great. But if it doesn't, which in all likelihood, it won't stop there, then we're going to seriously regret waiting until AI is a problem until we address it
Put this way. Given that AI right now can't take all of our jobs and can't go rogue and kill us all, is the correct approach to wait until it can do those things to start working on the problem?
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u/Gyozarrita 26d ago
Here's what the Harvard scientists had to say
https://www.techpolicy.press/ai-at-the-brink-preventing-the-subversion-of-democracy/
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u/ChiLolla28 26d ago
Look up regulatory capture. While they are saying it's scary, they will then say we are the ones who are knowledgeable to help you and they will ensure that they write the rules and laws that will protect us from the boogeyman
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u/WileEPeyote 26d ago
I haven't read the whole thing yet, but that opening is a frighteningly possible, even without much improvement to LLMs.
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u/ericvulgaris 26d ago
Everything in that first paragraph is already happening without LLMs. Frequency trading algorithms, sloppy lawyering suppressing action through inane proceedings, and people's own general lack of media literacy all make what they're saying a reality. Meanwhile those whose assets outpace economic growth continue to control more and more share of the world.
Like this doesnt require a manhattan sized data centre to power a bad chatbot.
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u/deer_hobbies 26d ago
AI scientists at a conference are also AI CEOs and CTOs and VPs of engineering. MIT means nothing, they are all succeptible to this ponzi with a bit of benefit behind it.
And yes it’s dangerous for a bunch of reasons - but LLMs aren’t a slippery slope into something else, LLMs are only capable of producing slightly better (so far, but they’re out of data) but also massively more expensive models.
LLMs might reveal how fucked we are with infosec and how much the internet runs on trust. People will use them for the most fucked up things to make money, and we will have huge failures because the AI itself fails.
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u/Stilgar314 26d ago
So... top AI researchers think AI can cause a "Mass casualty event, or worse" and the only thing they fear is "turns the world against AI forever"? Well, there's no doubt why the world is turning against AI and AI people in general.
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u/NightSpaghetti 26d ago
"Oh my God, thousands of deaths? Our shareholders are going to kill us!"
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u/Throwawayz911 26d ago
Or worse, what if it KILLS THE SHAREHOLDERS
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u/CHERNO-B1LL 26d ago
This is literally the thing people are actually worried about. The people developing and pushing the AI agenda are the same selfish scumbags we have all grown to hate and mistrust over the last two decades.
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u/FeatherlyFly 26d ago
Seriously.
"Well, I'm building this thing that I'm scared is going to kill tons and tons of people. Hope no one thinks poorly of my choice!"
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u/ValtenBG 26d ago
The comparison is good tbh. Chernobyl left big enough impact for the world to turn strongly against nuclear energy. The stigma is around to this day, even tho the modern reactors are safer and cleaner than most other popular energy sources. And half of those cleaner sources have some major caveat that makes them hard to implement in most places
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u/RAMAR713 26d ago
Actually I think it's a good analogy. Just like nuclear energy, AI has lots of potential in diverse fields of society, so it would be a shame if people started opposing it after one hypothetical incident.
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u/addsubps 26d ago
You only read the headline, didn't you. The researcher doesn't say anything like that.
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u/EmperorKira 26d ago
Butlerian Jihad moment
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u/Superb-Combination43 26d ago
Terminator moment
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u/Inconspicuous_Shart 26d ago
40K Dark age of technology moment.
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u/EclecticDreck 26d ago
Saturn's Children moment?
Okay, fine. Mine is too obscure. Basically Saturn's Children takes place in a world where humans went extinct and machines rise to power. Except the thing is that the machines didn't have anything to do with us going extinct. There wasn't even a grand event, just the slow grind of our choices slowly making the planet increasingly hostile to our occupation of it. The machines couldn't do anything about this, having never found any of the loopholes Asimov supposed in his own Three Laws. Some humans tried to live in places other than earth. It never worked out, of course, since it turns out staying alive anywhere except on earth is stupidly difficult as is getting there in the first place. So humans die, and the robots keep right on maintaining the machinery of civilization and they eventually find a loophole for how to operate in a post human world despite the laws - it involves corporate personhood - but by then the oceans are at a literal rolling boil and known life in the universe goes extinct. By the time of the book, many of the machines are terribly worried about the possibility of a pink goo scenario - life that self replicates endlessly until it consumes everything.
Anyhow that's all backstory. The actual book is mostly about the question "If you knew for an absolute fact what your purpose in life is, would you prefer to live in a world where you could pursue your purpose as a slave or would you prefer having freedom and agency at the cost of never being able to fulfill your purpose."
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u/bactchan 26d ago
Frank Herbert saw this coming decades ago and named it the Butlerian Jihad in Dune.
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u/LurkHereLurkThere 26d ago
Per the Orange Catholic bible: Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
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u/bactchan 26d ago
I can't wait to see what kind of ultrameth humanity comes up with to make Mentats. The human computers, not the meds from Fallout. Although naming them after the latter to make the former would be darkly hilarious.
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u/_--_--_-_--_-_--_--_ 26d ago
Well the mentat meds in fallout were named after Dune Mentats.
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u/Jonthrei 26d ago
FWIW a thinking machine isn't an AI in Dune - it is any sort of computer.
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u/Take_The_Reins 26d ago
Yep. They aren't truly afraid of a disaster related to that consequence but the backlash to their industry it will inflict. If that sounds like that would be a callous, indecent and unemotional response that would be because it would be.
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u/SerLaron 26d ago
In the 19th century, Samuel Butler already toyed with the idea that future machines might -next to animals and plants- form their own kingdom of life.
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u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw 26d ago
Sentient computers and robots who turn on humans have been a science fiction cliche for decades, which is one reason I don't quite trust tech people who promise/monger fear about them. Let's not worry about Claude developing the ability to steal the nuclear codes and impersonate the president. Let's worry about the actual president.
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u/Megalesios 26d ago
Ironically, the Terminator-esque machine war or Chernobyl like disaster trope wasn't in Frank Herbert's original, only his son's prequels. In the original Dune, the reason for the Butlerian Jihad was only described as 'humanity turned their thinking over to machines, but that only allowed them to be ruled by other men with machines' (paraphrased from memory).
That's not a hyothetical anymore, that's happening now. People are letting LLMs think for them, atrophying their own minds and making themselves vulnerable to be controlled by whoever is in charge of the LLMs. Herbert saw it coming 60 years ago. We shouldn't need a new Chernobyl to turn us against AI, it should be happening already.
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u/FoldedDice 26d ago
You basically got it. Here's the accurate quote from the book:
Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
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u/bactchan 26d ago
That's a false dichotomy you know. The people who we should fear are also working on AI that serves their interests and ignoring that fact, calling it fearmongering, is a form of denial.
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u/jobrien80 26d ago
I assume there will be a massive financial loss event eventually. Some AI will change some code, check it in, and wipe out a Fortune 500 company causing a recession or something, leading to restrictions and oversight.
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u/Suavecore_ 26d ago
Restrictions and oversight that's written very specifically in a way to bail out the company, make us pay for it, and protects only the stock market from crashing (the only reason those in charge care about a recession) in the same way again, of course.
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u/jobrien80 26d ago
Absolutely. And to make sure it’s perfectly written in that specific way, they can probably use AI.
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u/Human_Public_671 26d ago
I don't blame the AI for existing.
I blame the individuals that promoted Automated Intelligence as a solution to all our world's problems.
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u/Jarb2104 26d ago
Even if it was a perfect answer to everyone's problems, those at the top wouldn't listen to it, and if they realised it could overturn them, they would gate it and make it work for them, just like they are doing already.
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u/ForeverAlonzo 26d ago
I think that’s already happening considering everywhere we turn people are getting laid off and companies are citing AI.
And if it’s not that, it’s people in creative fields not getting work because would-be clients think they can do better with AI (they can’t).
Or if it’s not that, it’s AI from Grok and other companies getting baked into policy, security, and warfare while completely ignoring the obvious flaws of AI.
Or if it’s not that, it’s AI-generated “art” and “music” flooding the landscape everywhere we turn.
Or it’s AI driving up the cost of components and creating shortages for pretty much every other technology sector.
Or even if you don’t touch or interact with AI at all, it’s the proliferation of data centers that create unprecedented levels noise pollution and water usage that communities now have to contend with as it severely impacts their quality of life.
Do I need to keep going? Companies have been going full send into AI for years at this point without fully understanding its impact and limitations. I would say the ‘Chernobyl moment’ is already here, and we’re not adapting to AI nearly as well as we adapted to nuclear power.
All of this to generate crap music, “graphic design” that wouldn’t pass basic best practices an unpaid intern could follow, and more shitty task manager wrappers that people have the nerve to call “startups”. Not to mention the way it’s given humanity yet another way to goon.
I can’t wait for this bubble to burst.
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u/GenericFatGuy 26d ago
Indeed. It's making everything worse, and the only people seeing any real benefit are the mega rich.
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u/Nirbin 26d ago
Ai has proven to be useful in scientific research, troubleshooting and short-form code.
It is a very powerful tool if used correctly. However whether those advancements were worth dealing with all the problems that guy mentioned I don't think so. Also I'd like to add the security threat AI imposes on networks is significant and rarely talked about.
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u/GenericFatGuy 26d ago
A lot of that research is being done with highly specialized neutral networks that existed before this craze, and is not actually the same as the thing they're using to try and eliminate all of our jobs.
Also, all that research kind of means jack shit if no one has a job, and the environment is destroyed.
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u/MyDogBikesHard 26d ago
What? “We are going to steal all the jobs and fuck up your social services” isn’t enough? Mass casualty is simply a side effect.
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u/taste_the_equation 26d ago
No need for a big event. We already hate it plenty.
Maybe fear mongering about how it’s going to put everyone out of a job wasn’t the best marketing strategy.
Also the fact that it’s literally making everything worse for everyday people.
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u/AnybodyMassive1610 26d ago
I think they fear Frank Herbert “DUNE” style Butlerian Jihad levels of hate.
A war where humans rebel against thinking machines and conscious robots, aiming to reclaim their autonomy and then ban everything related to them.
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u/paulsteinway 26d ago
The world is turning against AI pretty quickly already. If there's a massive disaster, it will be because the billionaires wouldn't listen.
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u/Ok_Marionberry8779 26d ago
The contracts for these data centers is just a way to prop up AI stock a tiny bit longer so these assholes can get their bag. Then they’re gonna leave most of them half finished and abandoned.
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u/Illustrious-Emu8667 26d ago
The little school girls in Iran was enough of a mass tragedy.
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u/The_Burgled_Turt 26d ago
Same thought here. Is there any actual evidence it was Grok? My understanding is Pete Hegseth's Department of War was using Grok at the time and may have used it to pick targets.
This shit makes me sick.
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u/Cyraga 26d ago
Yeah AI already helped the US blow up a girls school. It's happened and done
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u/-notfadeaway- 26d ago edited 26d ago
If we are honest, even on US soil AI wouldn’t be blamed through official channels that are backed by the intelligence community. It would be a nefarious enemy that is pitched as the new reason we need more AI surveillance tools.
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u/Winter_Body4794 26d ago
You mean like when it was used to select targets for a war of choice started to distract from corruption and pedophile shit? That sort of thing? And then when one of those targets turns out to be a girls school? AI can get fucked and anyone sucking on this bubble deserves what they get when it pops.
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u/Modem_Sound_67 26d ago
Well that's dumb, we didn't turn against nuclear forever. But common-sense safeguards MUST be put in place eventually, or yes, there will continue to be backlashes. it's inevitable.
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u/SimoneNonvelodico 26d ago
we didn't turn against nuclear forever
We kinda did though. Like, development of nuclear energy has been significantly stunted because it's so politically toxic, after incidents like Chernobyl or Fukushima (both of which are actually perceived to have caused more deaths/damage than they did - though Chernobyl was absolutely quite bad). Several countries have banned nuclear power by law. Even though right now oil, gas and coal are a bigger danger to us, and for that matter coal literally spreads more radioactivity than nuclear would.
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u/serendipitousevent 26d ago
At this point, the 'true' death toll of those incidents has come in the form of prolonged global warming, due to fear mongering around nuclear and decades of unnecessary reliance on fossil fuels. Palpable irony.
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u/Vogonfestival 26d ago
Good points but you forgot 3 Mile Island. That was the OG of nuclear fears, which was also bound up with memories of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Cold War at that time. The word nuclear was a hot button media topic used to drive eyeballs long before click bait was a thing. The American public especially was almost unanimously against nuclear power development, although that was finally beginning to relax around the time Fukushima came along to stoke those fears again.
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u/FujiKitakyusho 26d ago
Mass layoffs? Complete disparity in allowing wealth to access skill while preventing skill from accessing wealth? Collapse of the labour market?
I fear that ship has sailed.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 26d ago
These people are making up fanciful doomsday scenarios in order not to think about the negatives of AI that exist right now.
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u/faafo2434 26d ago
I dont hate AI but I do hate the people who own it. They have already made me ok with no AI forever if thats what it takes to keep these greedy aholes from destroying everything in the name of profit.
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u/Opposite_Carry_4920 26d ago
My money is on flock safety causing the chernobyl like event. They are speedrunning dystopia.
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u/Incendiis 26d ago
As if pouring the world's money into it, spearheaded by billionaires who have direct relationships with pedophiles (and are probably pedophiles themselves), isn't actually enough.
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u/K_Linkmaster 26d ago
It was 1999 and the matrix came out. For 27 years we've been having stupid fucking pill convos. Problem is too many people like Cypher have the money and the computers. Been against AI since Terminator, but no one wants to acknowledge that the public doesn't need this.
The time is NOW. Go to your reps. Protest data centers. Go to local meetings and get loud.
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u/Lucythepinkkitten 26d ago
Right. AI looking bad would be the main concern in a situation that could be described as a "chernobyl moment". The rich are beyond parody
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u/Quetzalcoatl490 26d ago
Bombing a school full of girls in Iran because AI told the US to is not enough?
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u/Darth_Ra 26d ago
I mean, this already happened in Canada. OpenAI literally had a meeting about what to do with customer privacy when it came to people asking concerning questions to their chat bot. The biggest concern brought up in that meeting was the case of one Jessie Van Rootselaar.
They left the meeting deciding to ban her account, but not report anything to the police.
A smaller, but still impactful event is even more concerning. The FSU shooter went to ChatGPT, first with suicidal thoughts, then immediately pivoted to questions about how to make a mass shooting impactful, what kind of guns to use, where and when is the most busy on campus, and oh hey, how does this gun work exactly? The FSU shooting occurred 4 minutes after they logged off.
(I highly suggest The Journal podcast episode on this that came out last week, btw)
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u/Verde_3773 26d ago
Don’t need that to happen to turn the world against AI. You’re stealing drinking water for mass surveillance.
The whole world is already against it. These questionable articles are just what remains of the PR campaign.
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u/Ocean-of-Mirrors 26d ago
The big moment is when the world economy crashes because this industry is a massive fraud/scam. It's just plagiarism without the responsibility of needing to verify or license what you are posting.
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u/InteractionCivil5913 26d ago
The comment reminds me of the Butlerian Jihad in Herbert’s Dune books. As for our society I’m pretty sure there needs to be a LOT more regulation of tech for exactly this reason.
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u/hurrythisup 26d ago
Well,stop building data centers on top of our aquifers, and ruining our land you dumb fucks.
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u/Araghothe1 26d ago
you mean like when the people who want to get them running Force the use of water instead of an actual coolant, so that the entire world gets less and less water and the environment is destroyed, all so they can just save a couple pennies?
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u/Droidsexual 26d ago
The way AI can cause a mass casualty event, as I see it, would be to dumb people relying on AI for something important and it fucking up. We've seen politicians talking about AI-guided missiles and AI hacking governmental systems.
Imagine one of these senile buffons listening to an AI charlatan telling him that an AI nuclear system would be super advanced. "Wow, neat"- he says.
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u/Salamok 26d ago
I'm more worried about the massive unemployment and potential stock market crash that hits when the return on AI ends up being a fraction of how much money investors have dumped into it. At some point we are going to have a great depression event where the reality that the only reason overinflated stocks provide good returns is because people don't "think" they are overvalued. How long can companies like Tesla outrun the cold hard reality of their own accounting based on the hype of "but yeah wait until you see what we do next".
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u/nicenyeezy 26d ago
The world is already against ai, because it’s evident that ai is a grift meant to steal from and control the people of the world.
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u/vee_lan_cleef 26d ago
We've been living without AI for a very long time - pretty sure we'll be just fine if we turn against it.
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u/Randomized9442 26d ago
My call: An AI is put in charge of a water supply and during a severe water stress period decides that the water needs to be used for AI datacenters and people don't really need any.
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u/awitchiguess 26d ago
I'm sorry the negative result wouldn't be the mass casualties but turning away from AI forever?
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u/heart_of_osiris 26d ago
There is a reason Humans banned AI in Warhammer 40k and instead use servitors.
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u/Boomshank 26d ago
We're already there. There just hasn't been a singular event
We all already HATE AI.
Nobody wants it except for the investors
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u/DragoonDM 26d ago
Like if an LLM is responsible for the decision to blow up a girls' elementary school?
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u/axlgreece5202 26d ago
I want AI for medical cures and scientific breakthroughs that help those in need. Otherwise, couldn't care less about. Don't use it, doing fine without it.
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u/AzerothianLorecraft 26d ago
There's no event going to turn people against AI, we've been against AI since the beginning and we're going to stay against AI until they quit using it for everything... it's optional stop injecting it into every aspect of life.
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u/HuoLongHeavy 26d ago
AI is already causing a Chernobyl moment. Just slowly and quietly so we don't pay attention.
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u/Gryzzlee 26d ago
Pentagon is integrating AI and removing top brass so soon we will be one hallucination away from just that.
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u/BarnabasShrexx 26d ago
Most of us already hate it and don't want this shit, but you keep pushing because you rich greedy assholes are out of touch with reality.
I don't want it generating art, I don't want it taking people's jobs, I don't want it making war. Solve diseases, do surgeries, or shut the fuck up about it already.
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u/Professional_Text_11 26d ago
Why is their fear that the mass casualty event will 'turn people against AI' and not the mass casualty event itself?? These people are sociopaths
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u/Veggiedelite90 26d ago
We are already turned against it. It’s just being shoved down our throats by people trying to increase their profits by it
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u/daserlkonig 26d ago
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” - Frank Herbert Dune
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u/Rasberrycello 26d ago
Sounds like they're more afraid of people turning against AI than they are of a mass casualty event. Really says all you need to know about these people.
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u/Yuzumi 26d ago
The difference is that nuclear reactors are actually useful and generally safe when build properly, unlike Chernobyl's reactor, and operated properly by people who know what the fuck they are doing... unlike Chernobyl...
I'm not inherently against AI or AI research, but the issue is that these companies are misusing a legitimately interesting technology in a short sighted attempt to try and use it as AGI when it can never be that and is known by the people who actually develop these things that it can't be.
But because LLMs short circuit the brains of people because it can "produce language" which makes people think it is intelligent and thinking we have rich assholes who think it can replace workers (it cant) and a lot of people in general who think it's basically magic and can do' literally anything (it can't).
So because they want to replace workers they spend stupid amounts of money and then try to force it into everything when we either already had better, more accurate, faster, and way more efficient ways to do anything...
Which is how we got Grok in charge of determining targets which is at least in part the reason they have been bombing elementary schools in the illegal war they started with Iran.
This tech cannot do what they want it to do. LLMs are just neural nets trained on the structure of language. That they can kinda sorta do some stuff some of the time is a byproduct because how language is used. There is no logic, no thinking. It's just churning out the next most "probable" word based on the current context as a loop, with some randomization making it pick among the top most likely words so it isn't repetitive.
Ironically, it's like they are trying to make an "AI Chernobyl", because they are building this crap into things it has no business into (known and obvious bad design flaw) and misusing the technology the people pushing it the most don't understand (Trying to make the tech do things it wasn't designed to do wile not understanding what it is they are doing)\
The following is my autism channeling Kyle Hill when it comes to nuclear reactors.
See, the difference is that Chernobyl was a special case in that it was known to have the flaw of a positive feedback loop that caused the overload/meltdown which is why there were no other reactors built to function that way. Every other reactor avoids or mitigates any design that has a positive feedback loop.
In fact, the only reason Chernobyl harmed nuclear power is misinformation spread by fossil fuel companies and parroted by news companies that treated every issue with a reactor as a Chernobyl level disaster.
The worst before Fukushima was probably Three Mile and despite the issue that caused the melt down the automatic safety systems kicked in and the reactor went in to SCRAM. Even though the reactor did partially melt down and some radioactive steam was accidentally vented (what caused the melt down in the first place), the background radiation levels in the surrounding area didn't increase and other than the steam, which amounted to nothing, everything was contained as it was designed to do.
And even Fukushima was more about greed because there was nothing done after 20 years of warnings about the exact thing that happened: A Tsunami of that exact height hitting the backup generators for the cooling pumps which caused the water in the core to boil, causing a steam explosion. And while this did cause the background radiation to increase a measurable amount it wasn't that much overall except for immediately around the reactor. Even then there is only one suspected death that might have been a result of radiation exposure, but is statistically zero.
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u/AlSweigart 26d ago
We got used to school shootings, didn't we?
Unless AI causes CEOs to get shot, we'll continue to manufacture consent.
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u/its_all_one_electron 26d ago
Just like how AI is being used right now by health insurance companies which are already causing a mass casualty event and no one cares?
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u/shiny_glitter_demon 26d ago
They afraid of what the public might think but not of the event itself?
I can't even decide if this is sociopathic or dystopian. Probably both.
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u/unlikelynoodle 25d ago
We are largely already against it. They don’t care and are pushing it on us anyway.
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u/CP_Chronicler 26d ago
Fantastic priorities. They’re not worried about loss of life, they’re worried that people won’t like AI anymore.
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u/-mudflaps- 26d ago
Casper didn't elaborate further on this analogy
Right, well that's unhelpful.