I expect this to be a good but not perfect analogy to how an AI related catastrophic event could trigger political change. My understanding is that a crucial part of public discourse was, as other commenters allude to, a perceived taboo against being anti-war, such that even center-left reputable mainstream sources did not in fact doubt the evidence for Iraq’s alleged WMD. Likely a crucial component is a sort of moral dimension to the debate (“are you suggesting we should not do anything about 9/11?”) that prevents people from speaking out.
I expect an AI related fiasco to have less of this moral load, and instead think that scenarios like the Whenzhou train accident or the bridge collapse in Italy 2018 are more analogous in that the catastrophe is a clear accident, that while perhaps caused by recklessness was not caused by a clearly evil entity. The wiki article on the bridge collapse makes it sound like in the aftermath there was a lot of blaming going on, but no mention of any effort to invest more into infrastructure.
I expect this to be a good but not perfect analogy to how an AI related catastrophic event could trigger political change. My understanding is that a crucial part of public discourse was, as other commenters allude to, a perceived taboo against being anti-war, such that even center-left reputable mainstream sources did not in fact doubt the evidence for Iraq’s alleged WMD. Likely a crucial component is a sort of moral dimension to the debate (“are you suggesting we should not do anything about 9/11?”) that prevents people from speaking out.
I expect an AI related fiasco to have less of this moral load, and instead think that scenarios like the Whenzhou train accident or the bridge collapse in Italy 2018 are more analogous in that the catastrophe is a clear accident, that while perhaps caused by recklessness was not caused by a clearly evil entity. The wiki article on the bridge collapse makes it sound like in the aftermath there was a lot of blaming going on, but no mention of any effort to invest more into infrastructure.