A former Anthropic employee says AI will soon end humanity, and he’s been on a press tour about it ever since. The claim spread fast, helped along by what looked like a quiet cosign from Anthropic and OpenAI, and before long the entire internet was debating extinction. This week on Slate’s ICYMI podcast, host Kate Lindsay and Ed Zitron of Better Offline went through the claim line by line, and the doomsday version of the story doesn’t hold up the way the headlines suggested.
The episode makes a bigger point too. An apocalypse narrative is phenomenal PR for an AI company. It implies your technology is so powerful it could end civilization, which is a much better sales pitch than anything a marketing team could write. It also pulls attention away from the ordinary problems AI has right now.
The takeaway isn’t that AI is harmless. It’s that panic is profitable, and it deserves the same skepticism as any other ad. Next time a story tells you a chatbot is about to end the world, check the evidence before you share it.
So where do you land: is the AI doom talk a warning, or a marketing strategy?
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Local Lawton
Local Lawton is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.