I found out about AI risks during my university studies and the evidence seemed compelling. The power of these systems is just trending up and up and up, where throwing data and computers at the problem just seems to keep working. Instead of joining this industry boom, I decided to go start a PhD to do the research needed to keep these systems actually safe, but found the current state of security appalling! Its like alchemy. We understand how to grow these systems but not how they actually solve the problems they do, or what patterns they learned from the data. This is a bit worrying when the systems start doing things like blackmailing their creators and trying to break out of their hosting computers (look it up, this actually has happened)! I am way less confident now that my research will be able to positively contribute to the project of not losing control of AI and have just started pleading with my representatives and other researchers to please help slow it all down.
I used to have a poster on my wall that had 52 boxes left-to-right and 100 rows down, representing each week of your life, if you lived a 100 years. Realistically, I knew most people live to around 80, but that was still so many boxes to live! Nowadays, I get a nagging feeling in my head that I won't even reach the end of my 30s, like I'm still just trying to pretend that everything is okay and that life will go on as usual. It gets awkward when talking about starting a family, or when my girlfriend talks about what retirement will be like. I wish I could go back to being so hopeful about the future. I still think all of humanity's problems could be solved if we just have enough time but, without political action, we will run out of time.