OpenAI's June 2026 Report on Malicious Uses of AI [pdf]

Being very bullish on AI, I am not quite sure why this section is in this report. I have read decent amount of articles/news reports from reputed sources on real impact of AI data centers on electricity prices. For eg. https://youtu.be/iVGTGpKpykM?is=Hr2s386Hxn4yThlt

> The accounts we banned sought to influence two groups of audiences. They primarily targeted US audiences and generated English-language short comments and images claiming that data centers and AI applications were increasing electricity demand and causing higher costs for ordinary Americans…

Im glad OpenAI is publishing this sort of thing. This report is fascinating to read because it is so transparent - showing literal queries, images generated, etc. In the never ending, multifaceted tug of war (red/blue/anti-ai/anti-openai/anti-nuclear etc.) we have somehow lost sight of obvious facts like "its bad for foreign adversaries to operate influence campaigns." It's good for OpenAI to be transparent about this. It doesnt need a crazy conspiracy theory to explain it.

I think Americans in particular need to realize the discussion they are reading online is conducted by people that largely do not have America's best interests in mind - whether they just dont have a stake or they are actively working against it. This is not 2008 when Reddit was 80% Americans.

My point is not that we should all rally as a tribe or something. My point is Americans should stop assuming people engaging in discussion online are hoping America prospers. I single out the US because its a large part of the English speaking internet and used to be a majority group where this assumption was pretty fair. Online discussion spaces have become a lot more diverse over the past decade.