AI Doomerism has been in the news lately, especially with the loud, viral resignation of Jacob Coxon from Anthropic.
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LA Times story about Bill Gates calling AI one of the greatest problems facing mankind now, last Saturday at Telluride.
@James @emilymbender with a lens that AI is useful and going to stay relevant for some time despite the myriad harms, to me this becomes obvious: they are trying for regulatory capture through fear mongering.
Nobody gets to own sovereign AI or have their own ‘intelligence’ they can run and use at their leisure how they see fit; it’s simply too dangerous.
Therefore, you must rent it from us, at recurring cost, indefinitely, because we are the only ones who can ensure it is used ‘responsibly’.
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AI Doomerism has been in the news lately, especially with the loud, viral resignation of Jacob Coxon from Anthropic.
Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't seen any statements from CEOs and other execs who are more on the AI Booster side of the ledger.
🧵>>
I'd just appreciate it if these dorks would be more specific. Exactly how is a bot in a computer network going to destroy me? Please elucidate, otherwise I assume this is just another round of cash-inducing bullshit.
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The Boosters say: AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's imminent and it's going to solve all of our problems.
The Doomers say: AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's imminent and it's going to kill us all.
These are obviously the same story, with just different twists at the end. And both are nonsense. There is "moderate" position between them, but there is space outside of that fantasy world where we can see the actual harms happening in the name of "AI".
>>@emilymbender its very evitable if we stop letting the absolute worst interests run our societies. kinda like other things that are letting them destroy things faster.
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I want everyone, especially journalists, to notice the silence of the tech execs about this. This includes people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg whose recent blog posts talk about balancing the benefits and harms of "AI", and don't include Doomer scenarios among the harms.
They are complicit in the misinforming of the public. They are complicit in stoking everyone's fear. They reap the benefits of the Doomer narrative because it is their narrative.
/fin
@emilymbender All the while, human culture erodes and oceans boil.
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As @alex and I write in The AI Con (see cp 6): even though the Boosters and the Doomers like to portray themselves as holding down opposite extremes of opinions on "AI", they are two sides of the same coin.
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@emilymbender @alex or not.
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They can't, because the Doomer narrative *is* the Booster narrative. To debunk the Doomer stuff (and it *is* bunk), you have to point out that it's based on pure fantasy that the mathy maths are going to combust into consciousness ...
... or if not consciousness, then some thinking, reasoning, self-improving entity.
>>It's like P. T. Barnum but without the flair. "Step right up. Come see the AI that will DESTROY THE WORLD! Look at its horrible consequences, gasp in fear as it shakes its chains. Will _you_ be its next victim? Only 50 pence to find out. Step right up!"
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
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I want everyone, especially journalists, to notice the silence of the tech execs about this. This includes people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg whose recent blog posts talk about balancing the benefits and harms of "AI", and don't include Doomer scenarios among the harms.
They are complicit in the misinforming of the public. They are complicit in stoking everyone's fear. They reap the benefits of the Doomer narrative because it is their narrative.
/fin
@emilymbender well there's at least one, kind of https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/10/anthropic-researchers-warn-ai-musk
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@emilymbender absolutely. Both are attempts to name the apocalypse, which is a claim that whatever they think has to be important to all of us.
@ntnsndr I'd rather prefer we turn back battling climate heating and turning away from fossil fuels. Well, and NOT to build crazily energy & ressources gobbling data centers for these LLMs and all that hype. IMHO it is a too costly enshittification of data processing. @emilymbender
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Where are Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, XD Huang, Jeff Dean on this? Why aren't they out there calling out the Doomer narrative for the nonsense that it is?
I have an hypothesis:
>>@emilymbender My suspicion is that they'd have to admit that a large number of their block-and-tackle AI engineering corps are cultists, which means either having to flush them out and face a brain drain, or supporting them and dealing with a PR nightmare. Pretending to ignore it and making noises that capital markets like is the line of least resistance.
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@emilymbender well there's at least one, kind of https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/10/anthropic-researchers-warn-ai-musk
@ligaturerecords not exactly
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I want everyone, especially journalists, to notice the silence of the tech execs about this. This includes people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg whose recent blog posts talk about balancing the benefits and harms of "AI", and don't include Doomer scenarios among the harms.
They are complicit in the misinforming of the public. They are complicit in stoking everyone's fear. They reap the benefits of the Doomer narrative because it is their narrative.
/fin
@emilymbender Gates is an attention whore, except when it involves Epstein.
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@ligaturerecords not exactly
@emilymbender yes that's why i said "sort of" but I guess that serves to reaffirm a sort of doomerism legitimacy (as adversarial to boosterism), since this is musk he wasn't really about to say something true or smart (i was the meme "the worst person you know juste made a great point" until i actually read the article)
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It's like P. T. Barnum but without the flair. "Step right up. Come see the AI that will DESTROY THE WORLD! Look at its horrible consequences, gasp in fear as it shakes its chains. Will _you_ be its next victim? Only 50 pence to find out. Step right up!"
@skjeggtroll @emilymbender
Or…
Step up, folks and solve the greatest problem of our age! Get into the biggest tent of all and fight against the most foolish tyrants of our age. -
LA Times story about Bill Gates calling AI one of the greatest problems facing mankind now, last Saturday at Telluride.
@James @emilymbender Gates shows so obviously the same bias he has since decades it’s painful to read. He seem to have learned nothing from his past huge mistakes. What a disgrace.
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@geolaw exactly - this alone is enough reason NOT to use LLMs.
@ntnsndr @emilymbender -
AI Doomerism has been in the news lately, especially with the loud, viral resignation of Jacob Coxon from Anthropic.
Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't seen any statements from CEOs and other execs who are more on the AI Booster side of the ledger.
🧵>>
@emilymbender someone on HN commented that this Jacob Coxon guy worked there for less than 6 weeks which if true is ... special. No reason to trust that guy, he barely knows how to even request his PTO -
I want everyone, especially journalists, to notice the silence of the tech execs about this. This includes people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg whose recent blog posts talk about balancing the benefits and harms of "AI", and don't include Doomer scenarios among the harms.
They are complicit in the misinforming of the public. They are complicit in stoking everyone's fear. They reap the benefits of the Doomer narrative because it is their narrative.
/fin
@emilymbender Honestly I am kinda hoping the efforts to confuse legislators land at "Okay, we have to regulate it as if it's going to kill us all", because if the narrative (bullshit as it may be) is 'this has a 10% chance to kill everyone in the next 10 years" - then it's more dangerous than a nuke, and they just, like... give it to random people? to literal children?
Legislators who actually *believe* this narrative & regulate it as if it were really that dangerous would be a fitting outcome. -
@emilymbender Honestly I am kinda hoping the efforts to confuse legislators land at "Okay, we have to regulate it as if it's going to kill us all", because if the narrative (bullshit as it may be) is 'this has a 10% chance to kill everyone in the next 10 years" - then it's more dangerous than a nuke, and they just, like... give it to random people? to literal children?
Legislators who actually *believe* this narrative & regulate it as if it were really that dangerous would be a fitting outcome.@miss_rodent @emilymbender it's a nice hope, but that sort of approach leads to the kind of legislation we're seeing right now, where AI companies are only liable of they commit mass murder, and not at all if they tell a kid to commit suicide.
edit: oh and i forgot even the liability for mass murder is shit
chatgpt's license to kill you | Caelen Conrad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34bMvXOQfEM(tried finding a text version of the same criticism but search engines are impossible nowadays)
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@miss_rodent @emilymbender it's a nice hope, but that sort of approach leads to the kind of legislation we're seeing right now, where AI companies are only liable of they commit mass murder, and not at all if they tell a kid to commit suicide.
edit: oh and i forgot even the liability for mass murder is shit
chatgpt's license to kill you | Caelen Conrad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34bMvXOQfEM(tried finding a text version of the same criticism but search engines are impossible nowadays)
@Yuvalne @emilymbender It's not being regulated as a threat at all currently, and I doubt it will be, because I don't think anyone in power actually believes the skynet doomsday bullshit, but if legislators acted seriously as if it was even a tenth as dangerous as the AI companies themselves say it is, the only reasonable response is to regulate it so heavily that no civilian can even get close to using one without a security clearance.
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They can't, because the Doomer narrative *is* the Booster narrative. To debunk the Doomer stuff (and it *is* bunk), you have to point out that it's based on pure fantasy that the mathy maths are going to combust into consciousness ...
... or if not consciousness, then some thinking, reasoning, self-improving entity.
>>@emilymbender I agree consciousness is unlikely, but I don't think that's technically necessary; all it takes is something that looks like it enough to make humans treat it as such. Then we could get laws treating them like a legal person with rights! A bit like the (feels old saying now!) AI can't do your job but it can convince your boss enough to sack you.
It might not have to be real, just convincing to a largely uneducated population.
(Read your book, BTW, brilliant, thanks!)
