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Posted on 09/11/2026 10:34:11 AM PDT by T Ruth
“AI can kill us all by the end of the decade.” — Jacob Coxon, 2026Former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon made news this week with a grim prediction about AI. “The people building AI,” he posted, “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”“Climate change will wipe out humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.” — Greta Thunberg, 2018
“100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.” — Paul Ehrlich, 1970
“No other human activity poses this level of danger,” he wrote.
Wait. We thought it was burning fossil fuels. Or having too many babies. Or nuclear winter. Or …
We’d be concerned about this latest end-of-the-world-is-nigh if we hadn’t heard countless predictions from “experts” over the years about how mankind’s reckless ways were threatening our very existence.
Fifty years ago, Paul Ehrlich predicted mass starvation because population growth, he said, was outstripping our ability to produce more food.
Never happened. In fact, we have the opposite problem today of mass obesity.
Back in 1977, President Jimmy Carter warned the nation that “we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
In the U.S. alone, proved oil reserves have increased 28% since he made that prediction. And even with the Iran war spike, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices are lower today than they were in 1977.
(Excerpt) Read more at issuesinsights.com ...
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Using doom predictions like overpopulation that didn’t come true is one of those philosophical ploys (can’t remember: straw man?). Doesn’t diminish or enhance the argument.
Just saw a guest on a business network say that AI can be controlled by having another AI audit it. Would that work?
A wet-behind-the-ears provocateur. Likely a disgruntled employee, too.
WW-III could be the WAR between the AIs?
Technology is neutral. The first wheel was hailed as a good thing until one ran over somebody. No one knows how it will work out but you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Regardless of feelings, is China, Russia, etc going to stop developing AI if we do?
Instead of reading these predictions and saying, "Oh, okay," one is stimulated to look into them by the failure of so many previous "the sky is falling" predictions.
Good point. Your post does enhance the discussion.
Give 5G to AI, and access to the weather channel, and our deaths will be quick.
It’s clear that this particular PR effort uses many of the same tools that other public panic campaigns have used (including during COVID), but this feels, somehow, more particular, even less organic, and more professionally planned than most examples.
Look at the timeline: Anthropic have been out giving real funding to opponents of their business rival’s data centers for the past couple of years, at the state and local levels.
Dario and Sam have been appearing on every outlet that will have them, and giving congressional testimony that the technology they’re developing will crash the economy and is “as dangerous as nuclear weapons”.
Anthropic has also hired over a dozen Biden staffers, ranging from campaign messaging to NSC staffers, who for now are managing the AI doomslop, and preparing for a return to power in Washington at some point.
More recently, Bernie comes out with a plan to criminalize AGI (with a fully written bill with Anthropic’s fingerprints all over it).
Then we get what should have been an embarassing hyperventilation in the media over the “huggingface hack”, with all sorts of anthropomorphism about “ai agents” (aka software) plotting to take over a third party website. When, in reality, it was the engineers at Ant. who set up a hacking test, directed the test, misconfigured the sandbox, and then pubished this non-event to the world.
Which brings us to the present day and young Mr. Coxon who has three years in the industry, none of it in “safety” or “alignment” work, and who turns out to have a history with a British Labour/US Democrat party NGO called “Newspeak House”. We’re supposed to believe that he gets a placement in the WSJ, interviews on CNN and Fox “organically”.
No way, no how. Clearly some very experienced, competent, and well funded PR hacks are being paid and supported to push this narrative that, if successful ends with Anthropic and OpenAI in complete control of all LLM inference and models.
They’re not done yet. They’re ramping up for the midterms, but they’re not going to stop after that, regardless of the outcome. They, and their Dem partners want full control of this technology.
That would be a disaster, IMHO.
Find something to be an hysterical ninny about.
Skynet.
Odd how the young whistleblower who had been with the company only a few months before deciding to quit - chose to quit during the Republican Midterm Convention?
That said, many of the early worries about ai - the ‘paperclip’ problem etc have been answered by reality. AI has ‘common sense’ and if ‘guardrails’ are put in by commies - the Chinese versions and/or the New York City versions - THAT THAT WILL BE THE NIGHTMARE - NOT AI....
I’ve been saying this for awhile now.
Some discussion here yesterday: https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4394973/posts
In the late ‘60’s as a kid in junior high we were told computers were going to enslave us all and we were going to be overpopulated.
In the early 70’s we were all going to freeze to death in the coming Ice Age. In the 80’s the rain forest was disappearing. And now it’s climate change. Man. It’s tough being a climate conspirator.
The 60s bit came true, anyway.
Roosters are growing taller and taller!
You fools must eat more eggs!
The planet is doomed!
“Would that work?”
Works for democrats investigating themselves!
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