I don’t know. Most of the hysteria about AI sounds to me much like the same kind of hysteria that greeted the arrival of every other technological innovation. All of them have the potential to be awful but mostly what we’ve ended up with has been a much more mixed bag – some good, some bad, most just disposable.

I certainly don’t believe there are “no good outcomes”. I can think of a whole raft of ways AI personas could be used to make my life more fun, entertaining and amusing in ways that aren’t in any obvious way detrimental except for the energy costs. The web used to be known at least as much for its trivia and fluff as for the bad things it brought into your home. Think of all those cats doing funny things. I can imagine a world where we wase our time watching virtual pets doing and saying charming, endearing, amusing things as easily as one where it’s all negativity and hatred. From an advertiser’s point of view, do charmed, amused people spend money more readily than angry, frightened ones? Maybe it depends on what they’re selling.