Transcript from the video:
Dear AI Companies, the Doom Trolling Needs to Stop
This is something that Cal Newport said recently. He’s a tech thinker and writer that I like. He’s saying that all this doom and gloom you hear from AI companies is basically a sales tactic: when these companies talk about a bloodbath of job loss, or AI psychosis, or AI being used by criminals or terrorists or even dictators to do terrible things, build bioweapons or denigrate democracy. Or when they talk about the quote-unquote alignment problem, the idea that AI itself could sort of get out of control and do things that we don’t want it to do and ultimately harm humanity or take over entirely or cause the complete extinction of the human race (because that is something that a lot of these AI business leaders say very seriously). Mr. Newport, in the New York Times, is arguing that all of this is really just sort of a pitch, a sales tactic.
Because all these scary stories make the technology seem more powerful. And when the technology seems more powerful, then investors want to put more money into it. And there’s so much investment money going into this technology right now, into building the software, into building the data centers, into building the power plants, this whole big, as they call it, the AI build-out. It’s this massive boom to our economy right now. And maybe it’s all being driven by fear, by these scary stories.
Personally, I do agree with this idea, but only to a certain extent. I do think there are business leaders in the AI space who are kind of dishonest and who will say anything they need to say to boost their business. This is the business leadership that gets incentivized in an unfettered free market capitalism with no regulations, no laws in place to curb that unethical, dishonest behavior.
But I also don’t think these ideas are all purely bullshit made up to scare people to drive investment money. And the reason is, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know and speak in depth to a lot of people at the forefront of this technology. Some of them do work within the big tech companies for profit, but a lot of the people I’ve spoken to work in nonprofits, or working in governments. They work jobs where they make not much money, and they’re talented, smart people that could go make a ton of money working in the for-profit sector, but instead they work jobs where I do think they’re really looking out for the good of the human race. I really admire a lot of these folks that I’ve gotten to know. I think they’re doing this work for the right reasons.
And a lot of those folks are also genuinely scared. Not just because of what the business leaders say, but because of their own research, because of their own expertise. They are genuinely scared about what this technology might do to our economy or to our mental health. They are genuinely scared that criminals or terrorists or dictators could misuse this technology to horrendous outcomes. And they are genuinely scared of what they call the alignment problem.
And there is more and more evidence that this technology is arguably getting out of our control.
So am I scared of AI? I’ll say this: I don’t think it’s that simple.
The people I’ve gotten to know who I find the most convincing, the most compelling, say things like, you have to widen out your lens. You can’t look at this as just AI. You have to look at the overall picture of the way our world is going, the way power and money is concentrating into the hands of the few. The way that we are losing our ability as a society to communicate and cooperate. Those aren’t just issues of technology. Those are issues of bigger systems in play.
And yes, AI might really pour fuel on the fire of those problems, but it also could provide solutions if we’re able to use it well. This is why I’m working on this stuff, making videos like this. I’m making a movie about this stuff for Netflix. We actually just finished shooting. I’m about to start editing, it’s very exciting! Because I think if the technology is going to be used in a good way, it’s going to be because more and more people understand it and demand that it be used in that good way.
So does fear of scary outcomes contribute to that understanding? I think to some degree, yes, but it can’t end there. It can’t just be, “Oh, we’re scared, this thing’s terrible, it’s going to kill us all.” That’s not going to help. I think we can be legitimately concerned about some of the seemingly real risk, but then get solutions oriented, get positive, get proactive, get vocal about demanding that this technology not just be built for the bottom lines of a few big companies, but actually be built, developed, and deployed to the benefit of everybody. And that’s only going to happen the more we all understand it and the more we all talk about it.
So, they’re talking about it. Oh, and Mr. Newport, call me.
Cal Newport’s NYT Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/opinion/ai-dangerous-openai-anthropic.html
