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AI researchers warn of human extinction, yet many dismiss their warnings as corporate hype.

Big Tech has powerful incentives to minimize existential risks, not exaggerate them.

Psychological defenses help us dismiss threats too frightening to contemplate.

We’ve been hearing from multiple people lately that there’s about a 10 percent chance that humanity will be extinct relatively soon because of artificial intelligence (AI).

And one of the popular and, for me, most perplexing responses to warnings like this? That Big Tech is exaggerating the danger to make itself richer and more powerful. The idea is that the handful of richest men who ever existed on this planet are so manipulative and eager for money that they are going to threaten us with death so that we give them even more power and they make even more money.

Since When Is Killing Your Customers Good Marketing?

The argument is that portraying AI as extraordinarily dangerous will cause us to hand over even more power to them. This, in spite of the fact that many researchers over the years have verbalized the exact same argument with the exact opposite goal—that of motivating us to control Big Tech. It seems clear to me that acknowledging the potential destruction of humanity risks hurting Big Tech more than it could possibly help. But let’s consider the flip side of this argument, an alternative that IMO is more likely. That is, that it’s true that........

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