Virtual Intelligence and the Harms Race
The AI industry has produced a documented pattern in which companies announce model capabilities by framing them as dangers. This episode traces the mechanism from its invention in February 2019, when OpenAI declared GPT-2 too dangerous to release, through April 2026, when a private company demonstrated the ability to discover zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser — and announced this by declaring the model too dangerous for public use. The resulting dynamic does not require bad faith. It requires only that expressing concern costs nothing while acting on concern imposes competitive costs.
Essay: https://chorrocks.substack.com/p/virtual-intelligence-and-the-harms
Series: chorrocks.substack.com
Framework: VI Interactive Infographic
In This Episode
The episode opens with the original 2019 announcement that taught the industry how to convert risk warnings into capability advertising, then walks the seven years since: Sam Altman’s two Senate testimonies — pleading for regulation in 2023, opposing it in 2025; the dissolution of every major voluntary safety commitment from OpenAI and Anthropic; the lobbying record that culminated in California’s SB 1047 veto and the $125 million super PAC that doesn’t mention AI in its ads; Anthropic’s April 2026 announcement that its frontier model can discover zero-day exploits in every major operating system and web browser; and the chain leading to the April 2026 shootings at an Indianapolis councilor’s home and the Molotov cocktail attack at Sam Altman’s residence. The episode closes by connecting the mechanism to the Virtual Intelligence framework: the Harms Race depends on the public believing the danger lives inside the machine.
Key References
OpenAI, “Better Language Models and Their Implications,” OpenAI Blog (February 14, 2019) — the original GPT-2 announcement
Sam Altman, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee testimony (May 16, 2023) and Senate Commerce Committee testimony (May 8, 2025) — the reversal
Anthropic, Project Glasswing announcement (April 7, 2026) — the contemporary anchor
Richard Ren et al., “Safetywashing: Do AI Safety Benchmarks Actually Measure Safety Progress?”, arXiv:2407.21792, NeurIPS 2024
Gilad Abiri, “Mutually Assured Deregulation,” arXiv (2026)
Lee Vinsel, “You’re Doing It Wrong: Notes on Criticism and Technology Hype,” Medium (February 1, 2021)
