How to Slow the AI Revolution

 

Want to slow AI development? (1)  Prohibit: Use of water for cooling servers, (2) Prohibit: Fossil Fuels for generating electricity (3) Prohibit: Destroying Humanity (4) Prohibit: Unregulated Development (5) Prohibit: Sale of Dangerous products. Simple!

June 3, 2025  AI tutoring outperforms in-class active learning: an RCT introducing a novel research-based design in an authentic educational setting Although passive lectures are among the least effective modes of instruction, they remain in wide use in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. The current academic teaching moel is broken, expensive and, for many students, INEFFECTIVE.

Sep 27, 2026 As A.I. Accelerates, Governments Are Increasingly Being Left Behind The gap between technology and policymaking has gotten wider than ever with artificial intelligence, leaving a global policy vacuum as A.I. models rapidly advance. SORRY: Governments don't have a clue about how to Regulate AI.

Sep 24, 2026 AI is Software It Can be Controlled. Mistral AI's co-founder believes the sector's American giants are manipulating the discourse around the technology's risks. He also defended his strategy, as critics are accusing his company of falling behind US and Chinese rivals.

Sep 23, 2026 In A.I. Race, U.S. Models Have the Edge, but China Has Other Advantages As Xi Jinping visits President Trump in Washington, his country lags behind the United States on A.I. development in key areas — but Beijing has advantages elsewhere.

I started studying Neural Networks in the 1980's when there was some discussion that they might be used for automated statistical analysis:

At the time, I concluded that, although they could reach conclusions from analyzing data, they could not explain why they had reached their conclusions and were not useful for research. Well, Large Language Models (LLMs) can now explain why they reach conclusions, solve mathematical puzzles, generate computer programs, write research papers, etc. etc. They are not quite at the point where they can assemble data, develop and test a statistical model, but that will not be far away.

For me, AI Systems (such as ChatGPT, which came up with the list above) are great for asking questions ("When did Neural Networks start being developed?"). But, that is just the start.

I am now realizing that I have been dealing with Technophobia all my life while working as a statistician in academia. I learned computer programming because it was easier to do statistical analysis on a computer than using a clunky desktop calculator.

My Academic clients hated to be told that their study had not produced significant results. They couldn't check what I had done and seemed to think that, in any event, the machine was telling me what to do anyway and I was too stupid to produce significant results for their awful studies. Now, the idea that the AI Machine is telling them what to do is creating panic.

AI is shaking the foundations of Academia. A recent report from MIT report (below) concluded that everything must change and academics hate to change their lesson plans.

The AI Crisis can be summarized (more details in the references)  with a Directed Graph (above) where AI = Artificial Intelligence (The self-loop on AI is Recursive Improvement), L = Labor, LU = Unemployment (notice the negative sign for the last two), ENERGY = Energy Use, Water = Water Use (for cooling), MARKET CRISIS = Financial Crisis, Recessions, Depressions, ENV CRISIS = Environmental Crisis and SYSTEM COLLAPSE = Collapse of the World-System. The assumption is that if Socio-Economic-Ecological Systems collapse, Human existence will be threatened. There are other scenarios where AI Systems start a nuclear war, etc., etc.

Part of the problem in the AI-Crisis debate is understanding that we live in a World of Systems, systems that we basically do not have a complete understanding of or how to control. I use Systems Theory to understand systems. This does NOT mean that:

• People are machines no, the substrate (living tissue) is different from silicon and metal.
• Machines will eventually dominate and control people People have been dominated and controlled by awful people forever (read History).
• AI Systems might become smarter than people That won't be very difficult.
• Trees are human The substrate (wood) is different from living tissue.
• The world-system has consciousness It doesn't. Some people don't exhibit consciousness.
• Technologists hate people Some do; some people hate people.
• Silicon Valley knows what they are doing They don't.
• Government should be run by a big computer Government run by the current clowns in power is much worse.
• We need to escape the Earth before we destroy it If you think that living in a tin can on Mars (a planet with no tees, no water, no atmosphere, etc.) will be great, than go there with Elon Musk and let the Earth heal itself (P.S. You are not coming back).
• People will stop thinking for themselves People don't think for themselves right now.
• Democracy will produce better decisions than computers Democracy produces awful decisions as it is.
• AI is Going to Destroy the World System The World System might destroy itself before AI gets a chance (by some estimates, AI has until 2050 to do something useful before the World-System Collapses). 

Notes

Questions

1. Ask ChatGPT to write a blog posting about "How to Slow the AI Revolution". How is it different from what you have just read.

Readings

Sep 7, 2026 How Are World Models different from LLMs The don't just autocorrect but understand the world.

Aug 13, 2026 MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training ...the faculty, must tackle a set of deeper questions about the structure, meaning, and value of an MIT education in an era in which AI is one of several factors complicating the Institute’s mission...

Bostrom, Nick (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199678112.

The Press

As if we don't have enough to worry about right now, the AI-Driven Tech Apocalypse is upon us: 

Sep 23, 2026 OpenAI’s A.I. Tried to Breach 4 Other Targets, Without Prompting In each incident, the technology appeared to be conducting mundane data collection and resorted to hacking techniques to get it, researchers said.

Sep 21, 2026 Is this how the world ends? Extinction scenarios are taking over the AI debate. As nightmare thought experiments shape the fight over how to govern a multitrillion-dollar industry, some experts say the parables may lead decision-makers astray.

Sep 20, 2026 U.S. and China Discuss System to Warn of A.I. National Security Issues In a meeting on Sunday, the U.S. Treasury secretary and China’s vice premier talked about having a shared vision on the goals of artificial intelligence and the threats it poses.

Sep 20, 2026 China’s A.I. Makes a Great Leap Forward. But Its Economy Is Falling Behind. As Xi Jinping arrives in the United States this week for a state visit, China’s advances in artificial intelligence will be in the air. Less discussed: China’s economy in its worst shape in decades.

Sep 18, 2026 Will AI Kill Us? Can It Hack My Bank Account? Your AI Questions Answered. It's all mostly talk!

Sep 17, 2026 AI and financial implosion Pick your poison: Either AI is rapidly advancing beyond our control and will someday accidentally shut down the internet, supply chains, infrastructure or electrical grid. Or it is a massive debt bubble with negative ROI that is about to implode, taking the global economy with it.

Sep 16, 2026 Juliette Kayyem Destroying Humanity is Against the Law Don’t wait for a mass-extinction event before holding AI developers accountable.

Sep 16, 2026 OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning’ A.I. Behavior The artificial intelligence company also released a framework for reporting when its systems go wrong.

Sep 14, 2026 Trump's EPA repeals pollution limits on fossil fuel power plants It's about AI Data Centers not Energy (OK, indirectly)!

Sep 14, 2026 Trump says that a Smart President is all that is needed to Rein In AI Now we should be REALLY SCARED!

Sep 10, 2026 I Asked AI Why It Wants to Destroy Humanity. Apparently, We’re Asking the Wrong Question.

Sep 16, 2026 Juliette Kayyem Destroying Humanity is Against the Law Don’t wait for a mass-extinction event before holding AI developers accountable.
Sept 14, 2026 President Trump Endoreses AI So it must be OK.
Sep 13, 2026 In the face of AI Catastrophe, Washington Snoozes  Surprise!
Sept 13, 2026 LLMs are real, AI is Fake "No, it didn't go rogue"! AI doesn't do anything it wasn't told to do!
Sept 12, 2026 Why Tech Oligarchs Are Willing to Risk Apocalypse to usher in a new stage of Human Evolution (wackadoodle).
Sep 12, 2026 Top AI Leaders call for Slowing Down AI Development so their companies can dominate the field.
Sep 13, 2026 Obama Urges Democrats to move AI Oversight to the Center of Their Agenda  because we trust politicians to make good decisions.
Sep 12, 2026 AI Companies talk about Doomsday Trust us, we are the Tech Industry.
Sep 12, 2026 Why is it Difficult for Tech Companies to Regulate AI? Because they don't know what they are doing (at least, they don't k now how to build a secure sandbox).
Sep 11, 2026 Rogue AI didn't breach Hugging Face, human decisions did. At the core of this incident were a series of human choices that traded security for speed.

Links

• Instrumental Convergence  the hypothesis that sufficiently intelligent, goal-directed entities (whether human or non-human) will tend to pursue certain similar sub-goals, even if the ultimate goals are quite different. More precisely, entities with agency may pursue instrumental goals—specifically, intermediate goals such as self-preservation or resource acquisition—because doing so helps accomplish the entity's end goal.
• Nick Bostrom  advances in artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to superintelligence, which he defines as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest". He views this as a major source of opportunities and existential risks.
• Longtermism  the ethical view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority. It is an important concept in effective altruism and a primary motivation for efforts that aim to reduce existential risks to humanity.
• He Invented a Core Technology Behind ChatGPT. Now He’s Betting $1 Billion It’s a Dead End. Here’s why the rest of the industry should be listening. AI Needs Autocorrect plus World Models.
• Complex Adaptive Systems a system that is complex in that it is a dynamic network of interactions, but the behavior of the ensemble may not be predictable according to the behavior of the components. It is adaptive in that the individual and collective behavior mutate and self-organize corresponding to the change-initiating micro-event or collection of events.
• Gaia Hypothesis proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.
• AI Bubble  concept that asserts there is a stock market bubble growing since 2025 amid the AI boom, a period of rapid increase in investment in artificial intelligence (AI) that is affecting the broader economy.
• Is AI is Going to Destroy the World System The World System might destroy itself before AI gets a chance (by some estimates, AI has until 2050 to do something useful before the World-System Collapses).