A Former Prankster's Warning: AI Experts Are Sowing Fear Irresponsibly
The Contagion of Fear
Bryan Cantrill confesses to a college prank where he and friends falsely warned humanities students that a computer virus was spreading, causing panic. He draws a parallel to current claims by ex-Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon and Anthropic's Evan Hubinger that AI has a >10% chance of killing all humans within a decade. Cantrill argues such extraordinary claims lack evidence and that domain experts must not abuse public trust by spreading fear.
That is, if you have a newborn, their claim is that there is a greater than ten percent chance that your child will somehow perish at the hands of AI before they enter middle school.