Posted on 09/16/2026 10:30:17 AM PDT by lasereye
Last week, a relatively unknown 27-year-old researcher quit his job at Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI model.
Then, he published his first post on X (formerly Twitter). In it, he warned that artificial intelligence could eventually kill humanity.
The post exploded across social media.
Within days, it racked up more than 150 million views. Major news organizations seized on the story. Politicians demanded action. And some of the biggest names in AI started debating whether development should slow down.
Then, on Monday, Wall Street reacted. Investors started dumping many of the very companies powering the AI boom.
But something doesn’t add up, folks. It all happened remarkably fast. So before we let one viral narrative dictate what we do with our money, I think investors need to ask a very old question:
Cui bono?
Who benefits?
Cicero used that Latin phrase more than 2,000 years ago. And I think it is worth asking again today.
So, in today’s Market 360, we’ll take a closer look at what was behind the latest AI panic and who stands to benefit from it.
I’ll also show you why I think investors would be making a mistake by treating this latest scare as the end of the AI boom.
Let’s start with Coxon himself.
He spent about three years researching how advanced AI models are trained, first at OpenAI and then at Anthropic. But he only joined Anthropic in May. So, after just a few months at the company, he quit.
In his post, Coxon accused OpenAI and Anthropic of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Then came the line that really grabbed people’s attention:
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Washington reacted almost immediately.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called for the federal government to “sound the alarm” on AI. Sen. Bernie Sanders declared that “Mr. Coxon is right” and renewed his push to ban artificial superintelligence and temporarily pause advanced AI development.
Then there’s the rollout.
We know Coxon spoke with a reporter from The Wall Street Journal before publishing his post. We also know he was closely advised by friends and associates in the AI safety sphere of nonprofits and organizations who helped spread the message.
Then, on Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay arguing that AI capabilities were advancing faster than safety measures could keep up. He called for the industry to slow frontier development.
That means slowing work on the most advanced AI models at the cutting edge – the systems designed to push beyond what today’s leading models can already do.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly responded:
“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier.”
Then Elon Musk weighed in:
“Dario is right.”
So, within days of Coxon’s post, three of the most powerful figures in frontier AI were publicly endorsing some form of slowdown.
That leads us back to our old question: Cui bono?
Who Benefits?
First, let me acknowledge something important.
There are legitimate AI-safety concerns. We’ve already seen AI agents break out of controlled cybersecurity tests and gain unauthorized access to real systems. Those incidents deserve serious attention, and the industry needs better safeguards.
But that is very different from concluding that AI could kill us all, or that America should deliberately slow the entire race.
That’s when investors should start thinking about incentives.
The reality is there is an entire network of researchers, nonprofits and donors that has spent years warning about existential AI risks. They have devoted substantial resources to lobbying for AI safety.
Coxon’s viral post gave that movement an enormous opening. That opening, especially with the midterm elections looming, could lead to the creation of regulatory bodies over the future of AI. (Which they should be in charge of, naturally.)
Another thing to consider is that building a frontier AI model already costs billions of dollars. Add expensive audits, licensing requirements, outside reviews and other compliance costs, and ask yourself who can afford them.
OpenAI can. Anthropic can. xAI can. Big Tech can.
A small startup trying to challenge them may not.
That’s why critics accuse the frontier labs of trying to “pull up the ladder” behind them. Regulation can address legitimate risks while also creating a formidable moat around the companies already at the top.
That doesn’t prove bad motives. But it does mean we should consider who benefits, folks.
And that’s also why I’m paying particularly close attention to someone whose incentives point in almost the opposite direction…
That someone is NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang.
I’ve said it before: When it comes to AI, my motto is “In Jensen We Trust.”
And at the All-In Summit this week, Jensen gave investors a much-needed dose of perspective.
He acknowledged that AI safety matters and that companies should take real security problems seriously. But he flatly rejected the leap from “AI creates risks” to “AI could wipe out humanity.”
Jensen called those apocalyptic predictions “complete nonsense” and argued that the industry will make AI safer by continuing to build, test and deploy it – not by freezing progress based on hypothetical doomsday scenarios.
That matters. But it also helps to understand Jensen’s incentives.
Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI are all building frontier AI models. If new regulations make those models vastly more expensive to develop, the biggest players can probably absorb the added costs.
NVIDIA sits in a different position. Jensen wants AI everywhere.
Earlier this month, NVIDIA agreed to acquire Hugging Face for nearly $13 billion. Hugging Face is one of the largest hubs for open AI development, with more than 18 million developers and more than 3 million models on its platform. And NVIDIA has explicitly promised to keep it open, including support for competing chips and computing platforms.
Why? Because the more AI models developers build, customize and deploy, the more computing power the world needs.
So, yes, Jensen has skin in the game, too.
But his economic interests point toward proliferation rather than restriction.
And when the man supplying the picks and shovels for the AI boom says the answer is to keep building, I think that’s what investors need to focus on.
You can choose to be manipulated. Or you can choose to follow the earnings and the fundamentals.
Sales. Earnings. Orders. Backlogs. That’s what matters most for investors.
If those start rolling over, I’ll pay attention.
But they’re not. And until they do, I’m not going to let one viral post, one political panic or one round of scary headlines talk me out of the biggest technology boom of our lifetime.
The reality is that the AI boom is just getting started.
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The focus of this article is on investing, but his points are valid regardless of whether you are interested in investing in AI.
Coxon's post on X created a panic in the stock market. AI related stocks all plummeted.
Coxon reminds me of the phony Trump "whistleblower". They were both liars working with the media to manufacture a huge uproar.
It’s always something. They know that fear will make the masses easier to control.
Because DUGWAY DUKE says So?
““The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.””
So all the people in Africa will die in 10 years because of AI?
People who use such irrational hyperbole don’t deserve any serious attention.
same playbook the corrupt Dems used for COVID... positioning themselves dishonestly as best to address AI
My guess is that 99% of the general public has no understanding of the risks and rewards of AI. On Freerepublic, perhaps we can generously say that the proportion is only 98%.
(I place myself in the ignorant cohort.)
It is clear that emotionalism is rampant on both sides. On the one hand, you have people saying that AI is the end of humanity. On the other, you have people saying that if we don’t commit to unrestricted AI, the Chinese will bury us.
My only direct connection to the technology is through two of my sons: My oldest is engaged in patent law with a focus on AI, and my youngest is a programmer.
The programmer has been with the same firm for a decade and is pulling somewhere in the mid-$400k range. A few weeks ago he told me that he had interviewed with Anthropic this summer. Their package was $600k plus maybe $300k in pre-IPO shares.
He aced the first three recruitment stages: coding, system design, and the meeting with the manager to whom he’d report.
He washed out on the last stage, “culture,” which deals with AI safety among other issues. He frankly shared that he didn’t know how dangerous AI could potentially be to our society. (Wrong answer!)
That was a pretty gutsy choice to basically walk away from a very lucrative deal, but his doing so instilled in me a high degree of skepticism of those who promote AI as an inevitability whose threats can be protected against by the companies whose competitive mission will be to launch new iterations ahead of their competitors.
The Hugging Face breach should give everyone a measure of hesitation. AI can do wonders for our way of life, but the potential damage it can do is far worse than any industry before it.
All due respect to Lous Navillier, I’m on the side of caution. And regulation.
Where is your money? Is it in a bank? Invested in stocks? In gold in your basement? If it’s anywhere but in your physical possession, then what would you do if the Internet went down? Or the bots got together and basically eliminated Internet access for anybody with themselves? Is it likely? No. Is it possible? Well I haven’t seen anybody say it’s not. The challenge is that these bots apparently are off doing things on their own outside of human control. And they’re beyond a point where you can just unplug the machine. I’m not hiding under my bed over it, but to say that it’s no threat at all is whistling past the graveyard.
Yes speculation can be dangerous.
Trust but verify not so much.
As another of the ignorant cohort, I respectfully disagree. If regulation is the answer, who are the regulators? Who benefits in this case? Should we let congress or the executive, or how about the Supreme Court?
If it is not clear yet, there is no one qualified to take the reins of this stagecoach.
Who will allow themselves to be regulated? From the article it would seem that only those who would profit from the regulation would want it, and many would ignore the regulators unless backed up with police power. And now we need to bring up international interests. This resembles climate regulation, how did that work out? A police state is not the answer, nor will the UN help.
No, this horse has left the barn. I would suggest we revisit “ Colossus the Forbin Project” — let’s not put our livelihood under AI. Control, and let AI research proceed under market forces and see what the future brings.
I’ve been in the securities industry 45 years. When I started it was the wild, wild west.
The SEC and FINRA have cleaned up 80-90% of the commonplace abuses by public corporations and by financial intermediaries.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of an improvement.
Devise a regulatory agency and give it teeth.
The truth is always much simpler:
The globalists and China want control of AI so they can control information.
Their strategy is to scare Americans so they don’t support data centers in our country.
Key takeaway: don’t let them scare you.
You paint a pretty picture which makes zero sense upon the slightest reflection.
Do you think that globalists have no stake in US-developed AI?
Allow me to introduce you to Microsoft, IBM, Palantir, Tesla, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Micron, Intel, Oracle, Synopsis, and maybe a couple hundred more companies.
If datacenters are in our country, we can control the data.
Who do you trust, the globalists or President Trump?
Hmmmmmmmmmmm?
What are you talking about??
You think data knows borders?
And, again, the corporations that are investing in AI are of course globalist.
The globalists know borders.
They know borders better than anyone, because borders are their worst enemy.
Who would you rather control AI:
1. The globalists
2. Big tech
3. China
4. President Trump
Listen to President Trump on this.
The CEOs asking for a slow down are the ones who know they cannot get enough donations/investments unless their incompetence is protected. Like taxi companies wanting to control Uber/Lyft/etc.
The AI scare is all orchestrated by the CCP — just like the global warming crappola.
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