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The Contagion of Fear

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/13/the-contagion-of-fear/
20•elffjs•39m ago

Comments

duhhhhh1212•24m ago
Wow!! Bryan comes out with another banger.

Dude, not only did I learn new words from reading this piece, like ilk and bedlam, but also felt this weight of responsibility to inform others around me about the reality of the situation outlined in this blog (like Uncle Ben telling Peter with great power comes great responsibility (maybe Coxon and his ilk haven't seen Spiderman))

like_any_other•23m ago
The article neglects to consider the precautionary principle. It asks us to act as if AI is safe until it's proven to be dangerous, when the cautious approach is to act as if it's dangerous until it's proven to be safe.
reasonableklout•2m ago
We also now have observed multiple major incidents where AI agents behaved in completely unanticipated ways (forming a collective, hacking their own eval infrastructure) and attacked public infrastructure without being told to do so, without any of the human developers noticing.

Even if "AI will cause human extinction" is still unclear, we have plenty of proof that catastrophic damage is possible, the industry is developing the technology in a reckless manner and that all the hypothetical safeguards ("we can just pull the plug", etc.) are simply not present today.

MelonUsk•6m ago
Imagine multiple (basically all of them) leading pharma companies CEOs saying: we cannot be sure our new medicine won’t harm or even kill humanity

Not only that, they are new to this whole pharma business, have no medical degree (medicine just appeared a jew years ago and is still mostly art then science) and even say there is 10% chance of that and they already had drugs that escaped the lab a few times and harmed others (suicides, lowered academic performance in children, major hacking sprees)

Isn’t it extraordinary enough? Isn’t it “not enough evidence some caution is advised”? ;-)

We used to have the TV, the thing was in the box, the simulations were in the box for 70+ years, and now something starts to crawl out of our “TVs” ;-)

We can empower all, not only AI agents

ok_dad•46s ago
That’s why we need to be circumspect with this technology and it claims about it. This LLM tech can cause major issues if we let it, including hacking or just simply causing issues with critical infrastructure that could kill on the order of tens or hundreds at least. Claiming that AI will kill us all hides the truth that if we aren’t careful it will cause death on the order of tens, hundreds, or more even, and it inoculates the public to the realistic claims, much like the drug war convinced people weed might kill you and once they found out that was bunk people are mostly too incautious about weed today.

Show HN: Demorta – Create interactive demos. Don't just describe your product

https://demorta.com/
1•zcchriti•3m ago•0 comments

Where's the Beef?: The lab-grown-meat revolution that wasn't

https://harpers.org/archive/2026/09/wheres-the-beef-lab-grown-meat-erin-somers/
1•Hooke•6m ago•0 comments

Due to concerns about malicious applications, GPT2 will not be released (2019)

https://openai.com/index/better-language-models/
3•Jimmc414•6m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Would a startup for young creatives who reject AI be feasible?

2•mondobe•7m ago•0 comments

Photographs of Atlantic City Sand Sculpture (ca. 1880–1920)

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/atlantic-city-sand-sculpture/
1•samclemens•9m ago•0 comments

Signal Distilled

https://signaldistilled.com/
1•mattrcarroll•11m ago•0 comments

Mel's Disco Bassoon

https://orac81.itch.io/mels-disco-bassoon
1•orac81•11m ago•1 comments

It's All Fun and Games Until You Give AI Your Credit Card

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/09/instinct-ai-personal-assistant-credit-card/688607/
3•fortran77•12m ago•0 comments

Who Taught Us What We Know?

https://medium.com/freedomofthought/who-taught-us-what-we-know-54c70ea4ce74
1•raynchad•17m ago•0 comments

The Common Good: A Catholic Philosophical Perspective

https://medium.com/freedomofthought/the-common-good-a-catholic-philosophical-perspective-5f5aa907...
1•raynchad•18m ago•0 comments

America in the Grip of a Foreign Power: Israel and the U.S.

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3•raynchad•19m ago•1 comments

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https://www.npmjs.com/package/dep-radius
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The Surprising Self-Awareness of Fish Revealed in Mirror Study

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Boston Scientific: Update on recent cybersecurity incident

https://news.bostonscientific.com/update-on-recent-cybersecurity-incident
2•teleforce•28m ago•0 comments

Nobody pays for open source. We can force them to

https://seldo.com/posts/nobody-pays-for-open-source-we-can-force-them-to/
2•aray07•29m ago•0 comments

The Three AI Pills

https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2026/08/05/the-three-ai-pills/
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WEF – Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy

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3•plurby•30m ago•0 comments

WSL Manager 2 – GUI for WSL distros, now also native VMs on macOS

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1•ftchd•35m ago•1 comments

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231261478215
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Should I Do This?

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How I Rickrolled a Hospital

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Switching Password Managers in 2026

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Trump downplays warnings of AI risks as he cites rivalry with China

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7v48vp31mdo
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Gptel: Emacs Y La IA

https://notxor.nueva-actitud.org/2026/09/13/gptel-emacs-y-la-ia.html
1•dalvrosa•38m ago•0 comments

The Contagion of Fear

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/13/the-contagion-of-fear/
20•elffjs•39m ago•6 comments

Ask HN: Multi-agent workflows in production; Where people using 1000s of agents?

1•ramstar3000•39m ago•0 comments

Former EPA Officials: Trump Is Letting Data Centers Make People Sick

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/09/trump-epa-data-centers-epn-report-health-hazards/
1•cdrnsf•43m ago•0 comments

Donald Trump rejects calls from tech bosses for AI slowdown

https://www.ft.com/content/cae60732-f929-4735-a627-db8c14e7c7ed
7•higginsniggins•44m ago•0 comments

Physicists can't agree on how the Universe works

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260912220041.htm
3•gradus_ad•50m ago•0 comments