Headline barometer hits milestone earlier than expected
More encouraging signs of a world deciding to live
I last shared a snapshot of my Headline Barometer in late June. This is the chart tracking the daily percentage of headlines (across ten news sites) that appear consistent with stories about AI (blue), existential threats from AI (red), and, as a baseline for comparison, climate change (green).
At the time, I wrote that:
In a world that understood it was in mortal peril from the AI race and was scrambling to stop it, I would expect the red line to be at least as high as the green climate change line.
Well, here we are! Barely a month later, the red and green lines have kept pace with each other for almost two weeks. This is, of course, due to revelations that AI agents from both OpenAI and Anthropic have been hacking outside companies during evaluations without permission or initial detection. This didn’t have to show up in the headlines, but to its credit, the media locked on to the story and stayed attached as new information trickled out.
As of today, it looks like the news cycle may finally be moving on, but I expect any new reveals in the coming weeks to bring the headlines back in force. The discourse has shifted. “Loss of control” is now largely treated as an observed fact instead of a fringe hypothetical, and people are asking the right questions about where this leads.
In my June dispatch, I also wrote that I had taken special encouragement from data suggesting that “DC is waking to the issues with disproportionate haste.”
And once again, here we are! In a tweet, Punchbowl reporter Ben Brody shared part of his write-up of an interview with Texas Rep. Greg Casar, who is calling for a ban on artificial superintelligence and “strict regulations” on its precursors.
This is exactly the kind of news I would expect to be reading in a world that had decided to live.
The Punchbowl story includes discussion of proposed AI legislation from bipartisan House duo Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.). We’ve covered this before. The bill is about safety frameworks, third-party audits, and such — not about banning the race to superintelligence — but it’s still encouraging. Casar would like to see it strengthened to provide protections for whistleblowers and greater independence for auditors.
While my work-life balance could do with less interesting times, I have been greatly encouraged by events of the past two weeks. Starkly rogue behavior from frontier models did not surprise me, but the response to it so far has, and mostly in a good way.
The analyses and opinions expressed on AI StopWatch reflect the views of the individual contributors and the sources they cover, and should not be taken as official positions of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.