I agree that the left is a big tent and there are always examples of every opinion present in every political movement, but I mostly agree with this take: https://www.transformernews.ai/p/the-left-is-missing-out-on-ai-sanders-doctorow-bender-bores
This doesn’t take away from the correct argument that there are prominent leftists who are very vocal about existential AI risk, including really prominent people like Bernie Sanders. But for the most part, the left movement is focusing (as you say yourself) on the more mundane harms. This is not necessarily bad, but it means that there is a fundamentally different focus.
As for the right, it is interesting that you (correctly) insist that the left is a “big tent” with many opinions, but then the right is a uniform bloc that wants to “go industry, go war.” There are plenty of Republican politicians seriously worried about AI. Just look at Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Ron DeSantis. Are we really sure that the AI safety movement has no touchpoints with people who say things like “we have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years, and giving it free rein and tying states’ hands is potentially dangerous”? Because I am not.
Even Trump himself stated in 2024 that AI is “scary” and “dangerous.” Yes, his current policy does not support this view, but I press “F” to doubt that there is absolutely no way the Republicans can be reached on this issue. I agree that it will be very hard, but very hard problems are the whole business of AI safety.
Being able to do outreach to Republicans has a very important pragmatic reason, by the way: they are the ones in power right now, and they will be in power until at least 2028 (even if the midterms reshuffle the board a bit). Not to mention that it is absolutely not a given that the Democrats will win the 2028 election. Therefore, if you think that something like https://ai-2027.com/ is even remotely reasonable, then Republican support will be extremely important. And if not, then there is a fundamental difference here between “AI is the most transformative technology ever, and it might/will likely kill everyone if left unchecked, and it might happen very soon” (AI safety movement) and “AI will produce nasty deepfakes and do various other mundane harms” (left movement). That doesn’t take away from the deepfakes! They are nasty! But there is a large difference between “might end the world” and “will do various nasty things that we will have to deal with as a society but will definitely not end the world.”
It’s a spectrum where some people are less annoying and some people are more annoying, but in the end every time you talk about things unrelated to your main cause(s), you pay a tax by actively pushing away people who don’t already agree with you on everything (read: most people) for no real benefit to your main cause(s). And since AI safety is already the hardest problem humanity has ever faced, I don’t get the feeling that the AI safety movement can afford that tax.
And Stallman is a great example because the man had a lot of excellent ideas, but he was such a poor communicator that he really shot himself in the foot again and again for (I repeat) no benefit. Just look at why he had to resign as president of the FSF — you cannot look at that and reasonably say that this was good decision-making that furthered his cause(s).
Stallman is also a great example because he is a much more typical failure mode to be aware of for the average person in the AI safety movement than someone like Thunberg. That failure mode looks like this:
a) I am smarter than everyone else on technical questions
b) Since I am smarter than everyone else on technical questions, I am smarter than everyone else in general
c) Since I am smarter than everyone else in general, I can get away with things a normal human would never get away with: being very annoying, very hurtful, or focusing on ten problems at the same time
I have met a number of people in the AI safety movement who resemble this pattern, and we need to be very careful not to fall into it, but instead to think more along the lines of:
a) I am smarter than normal people on technical questions
b) It is very unclear how much that generalizes — for example, I might be terrible at policymaking questions or business questions (or whatever else)
c) Since AI safety is an incredibly hard problem whose solution has to come together from multiple vastly different domains, I will stay very focused on the problem at hand, I will remain humble and vigilant about my own opinions, and I will especially be nice, because being mean brings my cause absolutely nothing
(which, to be fair, immediately reminds you of the 12 virtues of rationality)