Timothy Lee: legislating against years-away AI harms was never realistic
binarybits · x · 2026-10-01
Tech writer Timothy Lee (binarybits), in a discussion with Nathan Young and Alex Nowrasteh, makes two points:
- He agrees some AI critics have been too dismissive of various risks
- But legislating against harms that may be years in the future is hard — it would not have made sense for Congress in 2023 to pass laws targeting the then-hypothetical threat of Mythos-class models
A compact take on the core debate over when AI risk regulation should happen.
Related event: Debate Over AI Risk Priorities: Extinction Risk vs Present-Day Harms(8 posts)→
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