This is kind of a funny article on AI and the personal predictions of "doom" when AI goes wrong.  If you have the time to read it, you may enjoy it for the AI prepper humor, however, it is lengthy.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/among-the-ai-doomsayers?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

Grace’s dinner parties, semi-underground meetups for doomers and the doomer-curious, have been described as “a nexus of the Bay Area AI scene.” At gatherings like these, it’s not uncommon to hear someone strike up a conversation by asking, “What are your timelines?” or “What’s your p(doom)?” Timelines are predictions of how soon A.I. will pass particular benchmarks, such as writing a Top Forty pop song, making a Nobel-worthy scientific breakthrough, or achieving artificial general intelligence, the point at which a machine can do any cognitive task that a person can do. (Some experts believe that A.G.I. is impossible, or decades away; others expect it to arrive this year.) P(doom) is the probability that, if A.I. does become smarter than people, it will, either on purpose or by accident, annihilate everyone on the planet. For years, even in Bay Area circles, such speculative conversations were marginalized. Last year, after OpenAI released ChatGPT, a language model that could sound uncannily natural, they suddenly burst into the mainstream. Now there are a few hundred people working full time to save the world from A.I. catastrophe. Some advise governments or corporations on their policies; some work on technical aspects of A.I. safety, approaching it as a set of complex math problems; Grace works at a kind of think tank that produces research on “high-level questions,” such as “What roles will AI systems play in society?” and “Will they pursue ‘goals’?” When they’re not lobbying in D.C. or meeting at an international conference, they often cross paths in places like Grace’s living room.

Thank you for reading this, I know it was a long read.  I found it interesting for all of the AI vocabulary use.  That was all new to me, see below quote.

A camp of techno-optimists rebuffs A.I. doomerism with old-fashioned libertarian boomerism, insisting that all the hand-wringing about existential risk is a kind of mass hysteria. They call themselves “effective accelerationists,” or e/accs (pronounced “e-acks”), and they believe A.I. will usher in a utopian future—interstellar travel, the end of disease—as long as the worriers get out of the way. On social media, they troll doomsayers as “decels,” “psyops,” “basically terrorists,” or, worst of all, “regulation-loving bureaucrats.” “We must steal the fire of intelligence from the gods [and] use it to propel humanity towards the stars,” a leading e/acc recently tweeted. (And then there are the normies, based anywhere other than the Bay Area or the Internet, who have mostly tuned out the debate, attributing it to sci-fi fume-huffing or corporate hot air.)

Normies, doomsayers and psyops are about the only terms I'm familiar with and doomerism, boomerism, acclerationists (wth??), decels were new.

Then there was p(doom).....which I think means what is your prediction timeline of AI doom?

“What are your timelines?” or “What’s your p(doom)?” Timelines are predictions of how soon A.I. will pass particular benchmarks, such as writing a Top Forty pop song, making a Nobel-worthy scientific breakthrough, or achieving artificial general intelligence, the point at which a machine can do any cognitive task that a person can do. (Some experts believe that A.G.I. is impossible, or decades away; others expect it to arrive this year.) P(doom) is the probability that, if A.I. does become smarter than people, it will, either on purpose or by accident, annihilate everyone on the planet. 

@Geffers....Interesting that the doomsters were on both sides of the government parties.  I've read often, that your big technocrats are building city size bunkers preparing for doom.  Maybe if they wouldn't try to control so many narratives in social media, people wouldn't be so unhinged?  I do also get what you are saying about the party in power.  I realized a few president's back in the US that it doesn't really matter what president is in power, as much as other marker's of power that affect either progress or social degeneration, which also depends on ones perspective.  This is the imperfection of government and why voting is still the only way to have a voice.  I also understand where you stand on trust too.

Feel free to rant anytime....true about the US and UK political parties.  I was actually just having a short conversation about this the other day with my dentist, and short meaning in between the dental stuff. I rarely discuss politics publicly, however, my dentist made some good points, same as you, and I added how much I miss the presidency having respect from the people no matter the party in office.  The "hate" in the US is very polarizing and I'm not sure if there's any compromise left in either party as they would rather draw a line in the sand and not negotiate. 

Trust, that's big...yes!

That's the thing, you nailed it....realizing that politicians don't necessarily go into "politics" for admirable reasons, they go in for the long game that includes a lot of power and anything else in the name of "perks" that comes their way.

Yes, the US debt is very troubling and I suppose those very same politicians will find a very creative way to deal with it.