Two Missing Pieces in the AI Safety Discussion

Noah Smith’s Noahpinion essay arguing the AI safety debate is missing two crucial elements: (1) making skeptics properly scared of real catastrophic risks, and (2) getting China on board with any meaningful pacing regime — without which Western slowdowns are strategically pointless.

Connections

• Noah Smith — author; Noahpinion covers economics, technology, and geopolitics.
• AI Safety — the piece intervenes in the AI safety moment triggered by Dario Amodei’s pacing blog, arguing the debate is failing on both the persuasion and the geopolitics fronts.
• Dario Amodei — his “We Must Pace the Frontier” blog is the precipitating event; Smith engages with it directly.