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Plus: US-China tech showdown, Gaza update, OpenAI hunts bad guys, new Israel-Evangelical synergy

Image generated by Clark McGillis using ChatGPT.

Do you think AI will usher in dystopia or utopia or none of the above? If you’re not sure, we’re here to help! Just look at the three pairs of alternative futures below and, in each case, tell us which of the two scenarios you consider more likely—or, if you find both alternatives vanishingly unlikely, so indicate. In the next Earthling we’ll report on the survey results, and that will give you a sense for where on the spectrum of NZN reader opinion you belong.

Note: As you’ll see, these alternative scenarios feature some specific details that provide texture and color but reduce the chances that a given scenario will be precisely realized. If you think a scenario is plausible in a broad sense—that it captures a kind of problem or benefit that AI could well bring—you should choose that scenario rather than the “vanishingly unlikely” option. And, btw, we’re not asking anyone to look ahead more than 10 years. If you don’t see a given scenario happening within that time frame, you can go with “vanishingly unlikely.”

And if you want to share your thoughts on this subject with other NZN readers, you can head over to our Discord.

1. Persuasion

A) Suddenly there emerges a big international spiritual movement whose rapid growth was planned with the guidance of AI and then realized via persuasive and pervasive bots. The movement leader cynically amasses wealth and power, and aims to secure control over as much of the world as possible. Eventually, this “leader,” having become little more than a figurehead for the AI that writes his daily sermons and his staff directives, is replaced by a deepfake version of himself that his followers find convincing. Who or what is running things becomes an increasingly subtle question, but in any event the movement continues to grow.

B) The leader of that spiritual movement, rather than cynically amass wealth and power, uses the movement’s influence to bring peace, love, and understanding to the world. Two key assets are AI-powered: the movement’s patented personal bots, which provide wholesome daily guidance, and earbuds that provide real-time translation between any two languages, so that grassroots international bonding can neutralize the effect of politicians and other powerful elites who benefit from international tension and conflict.

2. Job displacement

A) As AI takes over more and more jobs formerly done by humans, the rapidly growing ranks of unemployed workers get so unruly that multiple Silicon Valley billionaires retreat to their bunkers in New Zealand—which is surprising, because prediction markets had deemed an AI-abetted bioweapons attack the most likely impetus for the first billionaire bunker exodus.

B) The rapidly growing ranks of unemployed workers are happy as clams, thanks to the bounty and recreational opportunities AI brings. Some are spending ungodly amounts of time in AI-mediated virtual reality, and a few have been observed lying motionless, yet awake, for hours at a time. But they say it’s fun, and they’re not causing any trouble—especially the ones who lie motionless. And, anyway, most people spend most of their time in the real world, doing wholesome things like enjoy the great outdoors, play sports, and engage in arts and crafts.

3. Socio-cultural impact

A) Deep social fissures develop along the lines of people’s reactions to AI. “Neo-Amish” communities of AI rejectionists form as more people say they’ve “lost” their children to AI friends or have lost their spouses to AI lovers or are just freaked out by the fact that, in the “outside world,” beyond the neo-Amish perimeter, anyone with AI glasses can look at you and within a few seconds know your name and address and have access to all other online information about you. Among the other tribes that develop in response to rapid AI progress are transhumanists, who are enthusiastically planning their transition from AI glasses to brain chips and view the neo-Amish with disdain that borders on contempt.

B) Those neo-Amish communities never get very big, because few people are unhappy with the new world. Most parents say they’ve used AI to nurture healthy, happy, productive kids. Research shows that the number of adolescent suicides prevented by AI far exceeds the number caused by it. All over the world, AI is bringing good education and good health care to sectors of society that hadn’t traditionally gotten it. And as for those menacing AI glasses: A technical breakthrough makes it easy to enforce no-glasses zones, where people who like their privacy can stroll and shop in comfort.

You’ll never believe this, but it turns out that if

(1) There are two superpowers, and Superpower A repeatedly signals its belief that whichever superpower wins the race to superintelligent AI will dominate the world, while also using its leverage over domestic and foreign companies to deny Superpower B the advanced microchips that fuel AI progress; and

(2) Superpower B controls access to some of the rare earth minerals that are required to make these advanced microchips and other high-tech products; then

(3) Superpower B may decide to deny Superpower A and its allies access to those minerals.

Who would have predicted such a thing? Well, anyone with enough cognitive empathy to put themselves in the shoes of Superpower B. But apparently the people who make US policy don’t fit that description.

That was my takeaway from a NonZero podcast conversation I taped yesterday with China tech expert Paul Triolo, author of the AIStackDecrypted newsletter. We were talking about the implications of China’s recent restrictions on rare-earth mineral exports, which triggered President Trump’s (subsequently and predictably withdrawn) threat to retaliate with a 100 percent tariff on imports from China. Here’s what Paul said about the people in the Biden administration who formulated the chip export controls that China has faced since 2022:

The architects of those controls, first of all, didn’t do a cost benefit analysis. Normally at the Commerce Department, for example, when they were doing controls on space technology, there’s a requirement on the books to do a cost-benefit analysis. Like if you’re going to impose these controls, what’s the impact on US business? What’s the impact on global markets? The architects of these controls in the Biden era were sort of proud almost that they didn’t do any kind of cost-benefit analysis.”

The first Trump administration had implemented a less sweeping version of these export controls, designed specifically to handicap the Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE—but even this, Paul explained, was “a big deal” because the laws authorizing restrictions on tech exports weren’t intended for such uses. “Export controls were not designed to maintain US technology hegemony or to slow down China,” he said. “They were designed to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which is a much more narrow thing. And you can do that in ways that don’t disrupt broader supply chains.”

My conversation with Paul is now available on NZN’s paid subscriber audio feed and will become publicly available (except for the bonus Overtime segment) on Monday.

Israel has “carried out a number of strikes in the Gaza Strip during the current cease-fire,” reports the Wall Street Journal. Israel says it is targeting “militants who posed a threat or vehicles that came too close and didn’t stop when warned,” the Journal says. Meanwhile, Hamas, as it re-establishes control of Gaza, has been killing rivals for power, sometimes via public executions. On Tuesday President Trump said that Hamas “did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad, very, very bad gangs… and they killed a number of gang members. And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you. That’s OK.” But on Thursday Trump said on social media, “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not in the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.” Hamas says some of its rivals are backed and armed by Israel.

Israel’s government will be paying a new US marketing firm, Show Faith by Works, $3.2 million to promote—as the firm puts it in a pitch deck—“pro-lsreal [sic] and anti-Palestinian” messaging among American Christians, Responsible Statecraft reports. According to a federal filing, the firm plans to send digital ads to people whose phones enter the vicinity of churches and Christian colleges in the western United States—a controversial form of location-based marketing called “geofencing.” As the filing (under the Foreign Agents Registration Act) puts it, the firm will “geofence the actual boundaries of every Major (sic) church in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Coloardo (sic) and all Christian Colleges during worship times” and then “track attendees and continue to target [them] with ads.” The company’s pitch deck says stipends will be paid to “guest pastors, bilingual pastors, or pastors who match target demographics” to produce pro-Israel sermons and other content. The campaign will be overseen by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In a new report, OpenAI says that since early 2024 it has disrupted over 40 networks engaged in “abuses like scams, malicious cyber activity, and covert influence operations.” The bad actors were by and large applying AI to “old playbooks” rather than using it to to gain “novel offensive capability,” according to the report. OpenAI says its models “consistently refused outright malicious requests”—but OpenAI alone decides what counts as “malicious”; there is no external audit. The report’s case studies lean heavily on examples from China and Russia, framing the story as one of democratic technology confronting authoritarian abuse—all in the service of OpenAI’s mission to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.” (For NZN readers curious about what ChatGPT had to say about the report, check out our Discord—and feel free to share your reactions.)

Banners and graphics by Clark McGillis.