“A brief list of ways AI safety efforts could be net negative” by Elias Schmied

Here's Holden Karnofsky: I tend to think it's worse than 51/49. I tend to think we’re always going to be prone to overestimate how robustly good our actions are. And the more we learn about all the galaxy-brained considerations that one should have had in one's head, the more it's going to be like 50+ε%. I think AI safety is a great cause to work in. I’m excited to work in it. I think it's high impact. I am doing my best to do things that I will be proud to have done and hope for the best. But I really do have to live with the possibility that my ultimate impact on the utilons or whatever is going to be negative. I’m not aware of a good list of downside risks for AI safety broadly[1], so I decided to make one. This is not intended to be fully comprehensive, these are just the ones that I personally take seriously[2][3]: AI governance interventions are obviously high-variance: bad regulation can easily make things worse, many interventions could increase the risk of great power conflict, increased political polarization around AI could be really bad, more centralization of power increases authoritarianism [...] --- First published: June 19th, 2026 Source: --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO .