All of this is a pretty ignorant take on history. You don't think those who worked on the Manhattan Project knew the deadly potential of the atom bomb? And Communism didn't lead to famine - Soviet and Maoist policies did. Communism was immaterial to that. And it has nothing to do with utopianism. Trains were utopian? Really? It's just that new technology can be used for good things or bad things, and this goes back to when Grog invented the club. It's has zero bearing on this discussion.

Your ending sentence is certainly correct: we aren't imagining the effects of AI enough, but all of your examples are not only unconvincing, they're easy ways to ignore what downsides of AI there might be. People can easily point to how trains have done a net positive in the world and walk away from your argument thinking AI is going to do the same.

  > You don't think those who worked on the Manhattan Project knew the deadly potential of the atom bomb?

Many of those who built the bomb became some of the strongest opponents. They were blinded by their passion. They were blinded by their fears. But once the bomb was built, once the bomb was dropped, it was hard to stay blind.

I say that this changed physicists, because you can't get a university degree without learning about this. They talk about the skeletons in the closet. They talk about how easy it is to fool yourself. Maybe it was the war and the power of the atom. Maybe it was the complexity of "new physics". Maybe it happened because the combination.

But what I can tell you, is that it became a very important lesson. One that no one wants to repeat:

it is not through malice, but through passion and fear that weapons of mass destruction are made.

> You don't think those who worked on the Manhattan Project knew the deadly potential of the atom bomb?

They did. I am talking about the physicists who preceded these particular physicists.

> And Communism didn't lead to famine - Soviet and Maoist policies did. Communism was immaterial to that.

The particular brand of agrarian communism and agricultural collectivization resulting from this subtype of communism did directly cause famine. The utopian revolutionaries did not predict this outcome before hand.

> People can easily point to how trains have done a net positive in the world and walk away from your argument thinking AI is going to do the same.

But that is one plausible outcome. Overall a net good, but with significant unintended consequences and high potential for misuse that is not easily predictable to people working on the technology today.