The AI risk denier playbook

The AI risk denier playbook

​- Promote treaties ➡️ Promote authoritarian world government! 
- Enforce treaties ➡️ Surveillance state!!! 
- Define laws ➡️ Ban hardware / regulate math
- Advocate policies to the government ➡️ Shadowy lobbying
- Rich people donating to causes they care about ➡️ Evil people (because they're rich)
- One person out of a gajillion commits fraud ➡️ All these people are fraudsters!! (aka overt prejudice) 
- Tiny nonprofits advocate for laws that protect humanity from corporate greed but also could maybe benefit some companies ➡️ AI safety folks are just in it for the money! Regulatory capture! 
- Pretty much everybody in AI safety being pro virtually all other technologies ➡️ They're just anti-tech! 
- Us telling them exactly what we care about (preventing human extinction) ➡️ Who knows what their real motives are?!? 

Interestingly, it's actually really similar to attempts from tobacco and oil companies to stop activists from raising awareness and passing regulations protecting the public. 

I'm actually reading Merchants of Doubt right now and the parallels are eery.