Did Turning From Nuclear Power Cause the Climate Problem?

David Deutsch says fear of artificial intelligence is not a justified fear. He remembers people saying the same thing about nuclear reactors, loudly and often enough that societies stopped making nuclear reactors. He says that stop caused the present climate problem.

From his point of view, critics picked at random one of many bad things that could happen. They did not know whether a nuclear disaster would arrive, and there was no particular reason to think it would, even though it could. They alarmed everybody. People took drastic action to avoid the alarm, and the results were catastrophic. He calls the turn away from nuclear power the worst effect on the environment that our species has ever had.

Deutsch says turning away from artificial intelligence because of a similar fiction would be a big catastrophe, but not as big as the turn away from nuclear power. He had been tempted to call the artificial intelligence version a bigger catastrophe, then rejected the dramatic version.