Asimov's corollary:
When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervour and emotion – the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.

There is no doubt that Bengio is both very smart and a decent mensch. And he can still be wrong about how advanced "AI" can become. Wrong in the way any deeply learned scientist may simply have wrong intuitions.

Now, who can say what can happen in 100 years? But first we need to (collectively) get to that age, which means solving known and imminent problems, which means building the communication tools that will support problem solving at scales we havent done anytime before.

Nice
Best line of the essay:

"the artificial lifeforms that worry me aren't hypothetical – they're here today, amongst us, endangering the very survival of our species. These artificial lifeforms are called "limited liability corporations" and they are a concrete, imminent risk to the human race"

Couldn't agree more; everything that most of the AI doomers want/care about and can't seem to wrap their heads around is that dismantling capitalism is the way to do it.

Your three or four paragraphs that follow “I am not worried about any of this. I am worried about AI, though. I'm worried a fast-talking AI salesman will convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job…” are the best expression I’ve read yet of where I am on this.

The 2008 economic mess for sure drove a fascist surge, that we’ve not fully recovered from. I fear that COVID, Trump’s nonsense, and then a deep AI burst that pushes a total economic severance between classes could be enough to fully knock the wheels off our democracies.

Come on guys! We were promised a Space Age, not a Dark Age!?

Thanks. The Pascal’s Wager analogy is good, and I agree that large LLCs pose the more imminent threat but finding common projects with AI doomers isn’t a bad idea..

https://bsky.app/profile/did:web:pluralistic.net/post/3mjmcfghwb222

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Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/16/pascals-wager/

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* Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612

* The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P

* Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech

* Launch for Cindy's Cohn's "Privacy's Defender" (City Lights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuVCm2PUalU

* Chicken Mating Harnesses (This Week in Tech)
https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-tech/episodes/1074

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* #Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

* #Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

* SXSW #London, Jun 2
https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

* #NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI (The Strand), Jun 24
https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

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* #Toronto: DemocracyXchange, Apr 16
https://www.democracyxchange.org/news/cory-doctorow-to-open-dxc26-on-april-16

* #SanFrancisco: 2026 Berkeley Spring Forum on M&A and the Boardroom, Apr 23
https://www.theberkeleyforum.com/#agenda

* #London: Resisting Big Tech Empires (LSBU), Apr 25
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/globaljusticenow/2042691

* #NYC: Enshittification at Commonweal Ventures, Apr 29
https://luma.com/ssgfvqz8

* #NYC: Techidemic with Sarah Jeong, Tochi Onyibuchi and Alia Dastagir (PEN World Voices), Apr 30
https://worldvoices.pen.org/event/techidemic/

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https://craphound.com/shop/

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https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

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My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

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https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116407632843816941

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#1yrago Machina economicus https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/14/timmy-share/#a-superior-moral-justification-for-selfishness

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#10yrsago Brussels terrorists kept their plans in an unencrypted folder called “TARGET” https://www.techdirt.com/2016/04/14/brussels-terrorist-laptop-included-details-planned-attack-unencrypted-folder-titled-target/

#10yrsago Ron Wyden vows to filibuster anti-cryptography bill https://www.techdirt.com/2016/04/14/burr-feinstein-officially-release-anti-encryption-bill-as-wyden-promises-to-filibuster-it/

#10yrsago Paramount wants to kill a fan-film by claiming copyright on the Klingon language https://torrentfreak.com/paramount-we-do-own-the-klingon-language-and-warships-160414/

#5yrsago Murder Offsets https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

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#10yrsago City of San Francisco tells man he can’t live in wooden box in friend’s living room https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/13/san-francisco-new-home-rented-box-illegal?CMP=tmb_gu

#10yrsago How the UK’s biggest pharmacy chain went from family-run public service to debt-laden hedge-fund disaster https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/13/how-boots-went-rogue

#10yrsago Ohio newspaper chain owner says his papers don’t publish articles about LGBTQ people https://ideatrash.net/2016/04/the-owner-of-four-town-papers-in-ohio.html

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#10yrsago New York public employees union will vote on pulling out of hedge funds https://web.archive.org/web/20160414230326/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-13/nyc-pension-weighs-liquidating-1-5-billion-hedge-fund-portfolio

#10yrsago Panama’s public prosecutor says he can’t find any evidence of Mossack-Fonseca’s lawbreaking https://web.archive.org/web/20160419165306/https://www.thejournal.ie/mossack-fonseca-prosecution-2714795-Apr2016/?utm_source=twitter_self

#10yrsago Bernie Sanders responds to CEOs of Verizon and GE: “I welcome their contempt” https://web.archive.org/web/20160415165051/https://www.businessinsider.com/bernie-sanders-verizon-contempt-2016-4

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#20yrsago Retired generals diss Donald Rumsfeld https://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007432.html#007432

#20yrsago How to break HDCP https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2006/04/14/making-and-breaking-hdcp-handshakes/

#20yrsago How Sun’s “open DRM” dooms them and all they touch https://memex.craphound.com/2006/04/14/how-suns-open-drm-dooms-them-and-all-they-touch/

#20yrsago Benkler's "Wealth of Networks" http://www.congo-education.net/wealth-of-networks/

#15yrsago Scientific management’s unscientific grounding: the Management Myth https://web.archive.org/web/20120823212827/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/304883/

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* A Hole in the ‘Open-and-Shut’ Case Against Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin? https://prospect.org/2026/04/15/hole-in-open-and-shut-case-against-charlie-kirks-alleged-assassin-tyler-robinson/

* WORSE ON PURPOSE https://www.worseonpurpose.com/

* How Viktor Orbán Bankrolled the Network Around Reform UK https://bylinetimes.com/2026/04/14/exposed-how-viktor-orban-bankrolled-the-network-around-reform-uk/

* Two Visions https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/two-visions

* Caught in the Crackdown: As Arrests at Anti-ICE Protests Piled Up, Prosecutions Crumbled https://www.propublica.org/article/caught-in-crackdown-ice-cbp-doj-trump-arrests-convictions

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https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116414078285695998

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