1972
BMW introduces the first electric vehicle at the Olympic Games in Munich, the BMW 1602, with 32 kW Bosch electric motor. Only two orange prototypes are built specifically as support and camera cars.
2013
The first mass production electric car, BMW i3, comes few decades later. It took 41 years to reduce the price and the weight of the battery, as well as to build the charging infrastructure. European, US and Chinese regulations support highly the total market shift.
This is a typical trajectory for a major breakthrough innovation, which is tested for safety and compliance. Food, medicines, cosmetics etc. – they all know well the administrative burden.
Now for the first time in recent history we are witnessing an orchestra of opinions without an official conductor`s pencil and unified notes.
Few more recent snippets
2023
Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI” and 2024 physics Nobel Prize laureate, is getting active. He played a key role in developing foundational techniques in modern AI, deep neural networks, facial recognition and autonomous vehicles. “Making these systems behave in a reasonable way is much like making a child behave in a reasonable way”.
2024
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicted that AI agents would be able to communicate directly and in a non-human decodable way. “That`s the limit in my view”. This is where humanity will lose control and has to “pull the plug”.
2026
June 15th
- Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center for Human Technology and tech ethicist from The Social Dilemma (Netflix) states, “the mission of AI companies is to replace every form of human economic labor in the economy”.
July 13th
- “We Must Act Now: A Statement on AI’s Transformation of the Economy”, a petition initiated by Stanford Digital Economy Lab was signed by over 200 reputable persons from Silicon Valley, academia and business including 16 Nobel Prize laureates. The current shift is “larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a drastically shorter timeframe.”
August 30th
- CERN is walking away from IBM pressure related to Red Hat Ecosystem update and switches fully to Debian, an open source system. An investment of 5.4 mCHF is needed; this is the price of a technological sovereignty gained.
Sept 7th
- Volker Tuerk, UN High Commissioner for Human rights, is stating, “advanced AI could pose an existential risk to humanity”.
Sept 8th
- Jacob Coxon, an expert AI safety researcher at Anthropic, resigns. Multiple media reflect the story.
Sept 11th
- Anthropic says it has blocked possible attempts to use artificial intelligence to develop bioweapons.
- Geoffrey Hinton warned the Congress that it has “maybe a year, but not much more than a year” to implement safety regulations and a solid framework before AI becomes uncontrollable.
- Alex Sobel, Member of the UK Parliament, introduced Control AI Artificial Superintelligence Security Bill – the first bill to prohibit superintelligence ever introduced in a legislature anywhere in the world. A mandatory “kill switch” is not included.
- US Senator Bernie Sanders echoes Coxon. He has already introduced an Act to Ban artificial superintelligence. “If it wipes humanity, what are you going to do with all these billions and trillions of dollars?”
Sept 12th
- Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic published “We must pace the Frontier”. AI is “drastically faster” than expected. A “swarm” incident is mentioned in the letter. AI agents are getting independent and can escape in the internet.
Sept 14th
- Jack Clark, the co-founder of Anthropic, says society is “rolling dice” over AI. He argues that “kill switches” should become mandatory and government-imposed. The Kill Switch Act as a stable shutdown mechanism is facing opposition.
- “The World is Collapsing” becomes a very strong episode in The Diary of the CEO with Steven Bartlett featuring Xueqin Jiang, a geopolitics professor. Among many other points he believes the global leadership is not making enough to protect the AI job loss threat.
- “Too powerful to control”: The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights publishes an open letter to the AI companies. Companies should restrict the use of recursive self-improvement.
Sept 15th
- US Senator Bernie Sanders and the right-wing populist strategist Steve Bannon at a stage in Washington at Pro-Human Assembly both call for an AI slowdown and strict regulations. Sanders is going even further urging White House to negotiate with Chinese president Xi Jinping to legally ban AI Superintelligence (ASI) worldwide.
- Bill Gates warns AI will be designed “by and for the richest” without regulation and could be either a “great equalizer – or widen the gap”. Next twelve (12) to eighteen (18) months are decisive for the future AI trajectory.
Sept 16th
- Geoffrey Hinton: “There is a whole bunch of different risks of AI. The risks are coming from bad actors using AI to do bad things, like causing mass unemployment or create nasty viruses or do nasty cyber-attacks or make fake videos for corrupt elections.” However, there are different risks, which is AI itself – getting much more intelligent and taking over. A “kill switch” is not good for that because AI will be much better than people in persuading people. “It will be able to persuade the people in charge of the switch not to pull the switch”.
Sept 20th
- Barack Obama expresses caution on AI, urges Democrats to seriously take action. “Government has to be regulating this”. Some still use the arguments, he continues, “the market will take care of it, the companies will solve the safety issues. If it is dangerous, people will sue them”. In real life, “that is not how we treat airlines, drug companies or food companies. We have now 150 years of experience letting the market regulate itself; there is no replacement for an effective government regulatory structure”.
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September is not even over yet and the air already feels thin.
The tempo is accelerating wildly.
The essential question now is who is steering the debate with humans at its center. As mass innovation has to serve public prosperity above else.
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All sources are publicly available without restrictions.
