Is the AI Doom Fever Breaking? | AI Reality Check

The way that CEOs of major AI companies have been talking about their products in recent years really has been bonkers. They seem to be going out of their way to terrify their potential customers. I mean, last week I played a clip of Microsoft CEO Mustafa Suliman claiming that their AI systems would be capable of fully automating basically every knowledge work task within a year. That's not a very nice thing to tell your customers. All your jobs are going to go away, by the way.

We're working on it. Hold for applause, I guess. Now he's far from alone in making these type of disturbing claims. Here's OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talking last summer about what the world is going to be like after AI takes over everything. People really need agency, like they really need to feel like they have a voice in governing the future and deciding where things go.

And I think if you just like say, okay, AI is going to do everything and then everybody gets like a, you know, dividend from that, it's not going to feel good. And and I don't think it actually would be good for people. So I think we need to find a way where we're not just like if we're in this world where we're not just distributing money or wealth, like I actually I I don't just want like a check every month. What I would want is like a ownership share in whatever the AI creates so that I feel like I'm participating in this thing that's going to compound and get more valuable over time.

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