"Here's how to make money with AI" content is extremely popular on Youtube India. It's understandable because when you have a GDP per capita of only ~$3000 and low to minimal government support in everyday life, the vast majority of people are just focused on making more money to live a more comfortable life.

In such a context, it's hardly surprising that all the talk here is around AI Capabilities and how we can wield them to solve problems. Worrying about AI Safety is unfortunately for people who have their base needs met and that is only a fraction of the Indian population.

I wonder then, how do you get a country like this to care about AI Safety?

A movie? The movie industry reaches a large majority of the country. Claude estimates that approximately 8–12% of India has watched Dhurandhar with some allegations that the Indian government tried to spread propaganda through movies. If I was trying to spread information about a certain issue, a small clip in a popular movie is the way to go.

Indians are extremely diverse but if there's one thing that unites us, it's Pakistan. A leading open-source AI model with lax safeguards is going to turbocharge terrorism against India. This is something everyone can care about and get behind to prevent.

Some societal chaos in India feels very likely soon. Mythos already has advanced cyber capabilities. Open-source models are, at most, 8 months away.

What do I predict will happen?

• An Indian public sector bank has its systems hacked and customer data erased or some equivalent of that.
  • India has tons of banks and I find it easy to believe that some of the regional banks will not have strong security practices. So far, they might have been safe just because nobody really bothered to look but in a world where Mythos-like cyber capabilities are available open-source, they're no longer safe.
• Any AI winter is going to cause some GCC jobs to go away
  • There is a class of jobs that existed in India because of its low-cost English speaking labor that is going to be automated away soon. And with it, a reliable way of upward mobility taken away from its citizens. Land values in some Indian cities are directly correlated with software exports and if that decrease, there are going to be ripple effects felt throughout the economy.

Dwarkesh asked

What should countries which are not currently in the AI production chain (semis, energy, frontier models, robotics) do in order to not get totally sidestepped by transformative AI? If you're the leader of India or Nigeria, what do you do right now?

I have no idea but there must be something.