You may have seen factions of the left being opposed to current attempts to regulate the AI industry, despite the fact that they clearly also want to stop AI. I think I can explain why we're talking past each other.

To do this, I will define three different types of AI risk:

AI does exactly what some random guy wants: hacking, biorisk, terrorism
AI does exactly what people currently in power want (or puts people in power): military usage, job losses, wealth concentration, mass surveillance
AI does what nobody wants: takeover, turning the Earth into computronium, etc.

Most x-risk people are focused on the third risk and sometimes the first risk, but often appear to be blind to the second risk - whether it's because of ideology such as libertarianism, or motivated reasoning to obtain the US government's money, or because (as with many people here) the third risk is considered so important that the other two are discarded as irrelevant.

On the other hand, many people on the left-left only see the second risk, and interpret actions against the first or third risk as tacitly or actively encouraging the second risk. For example, pacing and monitoring laws [...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
October 6th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tLDcSELHCufEtuMgf/three-types-of-ai-risk-why-some-leftists-are-against-some-ai

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Three types of AI risk: why (some) leftists are against (some) AI regulations” by sudo-nym

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Three types of AI risk: why (some) leftists are against (some) AI regulations” by sudo-nym