ReadMultiplex.com: METR: The New AI Measurement Gatekeepers and the Quiet Path to State Control of AI

For over a decade a small group have planned to become the central authority to “protect you” from AI. It sounds like a bad movie script, but understand that when you read this, all of this is taking place. So let's break down the mechanics of the public script, because once you see the pattern, I swear you cannot unsee it. It's everywhere once you look not with conspiracy but with evidence. Step one. Name an unbounded apocalyptic catastrophe. Step two. Attach a very short, very terrifying countdown clock to it. Step three, demand centralized political permission to build or continue development in that sector. And step four, this is the kicker, when the catastrophe inevitably doesn't arrive on schedule, you don't apologize. You just move the clock and ask for more money. It feels exactly like a doomsday cult. You know, like the people who gather on a mountaintop all wearing Nike sneakers on a Tuesday because the leader said a spaceship is coming to destroy the Earth.

And then Wednesday morning rolls around. The sun comes up, no spaceship. But they don't disband. They don't admit they were wrong. The leader just says, our unified prayers bought us a brief window of time. The spaceship is actually coming next month, but we need stricter rules and larger donations to ensure we survive. This mountaintop analogy perfectly captures the psychological trap here. When a group's identity, and frankly their financial structure, are tied to an impending apocalypse, a failed prediction doesn't result in them re-evaluating their core belief. It results in them doubling down on the urgency.

And this isn't just an AI phenomenon, this lens examines the historical base rates of these exact types of apocalyptic predictions. The clocks that would not pay.And the methodology of how these historical predictions failed is identical to how the current AI doom predictions will fail. We look at the trail of failures that destroyed generations it starts with a massive cultural touchstone from 1968, Paul Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich, a biologist, predicted that the battle to feed all of humanity was already over. He said that in the 1970s and 80s, hundreds of millions of people would starve to death regardless of any crash programs embarked upon at that time. And people just accepted this as fact. It was treated as a mathematical, scientific inevitability by the press and policymakers. We drive past the “No Nukes” anti enegery deception that sent the US on to a deeper connection to petrochemical energy. None of this is new, the new mask goes on the same corpse of dead end ideology.

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