The battle over AI doom

A wave of warnings from researchers and tech chiefs calling for a global pause on artificial intelligence has triggered a fierce debate over whether the industry is facing a genuine safety crisis or using "doom" to secure its own market dominance.

"I believe that if we don't slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future," Jacob Coxon, who worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic before resigning, told the BBC. The 27-year-old researcher claimed that the pace of advancement has left industry insiders "genuinely frightened", with some colleagues quietly buying up land to prepare for societal instability.

What are the warnings about AI?

Coxon’s viral exit coincided with an essay by his former boss, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, who called for a coordinated deceleration in AI development to give governments and companies time to address the risks. Amodei’s proposal has found some unlikely allies. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, head of xAI, both said they support the call for independent monitoring and regulation.

Yet as these warnings multiply — with some developers putting the risk of AI wiping out humanity in the next decade at roughly 10 per cent — skeptics are raising questions about the industry's real motives. To critics, the sudden panic looks less like a public service and more like a sophisticated marketing strategy designed to justify astronomical valuations and block competition.

Why are critics skeptical?

"Because the only way to justify these valuations is to actually claim: 'I'm going to take over every industry and I'm going to take over every job, and my AI is going to be doing all that work,'" George Arison, chief executive of Grindr, told the BBC.

Others suggest the fear-mongering is a classic case of regulatory capture. By demanding strict government oversight, established giants like OpenAI — recently valued at $852 billion — and Anthropic, which is currently preparing for an initial public offering, could effectively pull up the drawbridge behind them, preventing smaller, open-source rivals from competing.

Clement Delangue, chief executive of the open-source AI platform Hugging Face, questioned the expertise of those sounding the alarm, comparing asking a researcher about extinction risk to "asking your AC guy about climate change." Meanwhile, Jensen Huang, the head of chip-making giant Nvidia, reportedly dismissed the apocalyptic fears as untrue during a recent Goldman Sachs conference.

How is politics responding?

For politicians, the dilemma is complicated by geopolitics. While House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has urged Congress to act immediately to regulate the sector, US President Donald Trump made it clear that national rivalry remains the priority. "Whoever wins AI wins," Trump said, arguing that the US must maintain its lead over China regardless of the risks.

Anthropic has defended its safety record, stating it continues to build models with the strongest safeguards and is pushing for a lawful, verifiable way for the industry to pace its releases. But with some researchers warning that a swarm of malicious bots could realistically take over the internet within six to twelve months, the line between genuine precaution and self-serving hype remains dangerously blurred.