The AI “safety” movement has operated in the United States for quite some time, and it has done so with considerable power, but remarkably little resistance.
These forces operate within a network of high profile technology founders, employees, and activists. In order to appeal to the masses, they’ve historically presented themselves as mere neutral experts on AI, and simple dispassionate voices who were concerned about humanity and want to protect it from a supposed imminent apocalyptic scenario.
In reality, the AI doomers were quietly advancing a hyper political project with specific objectives. They want to act as gatekeepers of the AI future, while empowering a mutually credentialed set of approved individuals, corporations, and constructed international regulatory bodies, with the goal of harvesting complete control over perhaps the most important innovation of our time.
But they’ve overplayed their hand, badly.
The ongoing blitz campaign to “pace the frontier” of AI has exposed the doomers’ agenda. And it has awakened a powerful coalition of Americans that recognize everything that’s on the line if their gambit succeeds. What’s at stake? Just the future of economic abundance, American sovereignty, and the freedom to build out great ideas without permission of an unaccountable group of supposed experts.
Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who had a remarkably short stint at Anthropic, helped trigger the latest panic by declaring that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”. Coxon’s doomsaying has sparked tons of interest from primetime television, where he has laundered doomer narratives to the masses.
Suspiciously, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei did not condemn Coxon. No, he subsequently said he agreed with Coxon.
Amodei’s recently published “pace the frontier” essay calls for deliberately slowing the development of AI through third-party monitors, blanket restrictions, government intervention, and eventually international coordination that would include China.
Amodei and his collaboratos are clearly gunning for the creation of an AI cartel, one which would deliver incredible power to his ideological bubble.
Should his plan succeed, smaller competitors would face impossibly high compliance costs and it would freeze them out of the AI market. The incumbents that raced ahead (and now want to “pace) in an open business environment want to pull the ladder up behind them.
Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, quickly endorsed Amodei’s, writing that he agreed with Amodei about pacing the frontier and supported this notion of third party evaluators (who just happen to be likeminded members of the San Francisco AI safety gang). Surprise!
Altman has also spent years advocating an international AI regulator modeled on the International Atomic Energy Agency, before backtracking on the idea after some considerable pushback. Now, apparently, he’s back on board and trying to help Amodei install this duopoly.
The duopoly seekers and their allies in the AI doomer world want what amounts to a U.N. for AI.
And because their supranational institution would be an international outfit, it would inevitably require negotiation with China over a global AI deal.
So the doomers now want both a U.N. for AI and a Paris Climate Deal 2.0 with China.
They want unilateral disarmament, and we’re supposed to just go along with it.
The doomers apparently expected the Trump Administration to just fall in line. Instead, they provoked a backlash from some of the most powerful political figures and influential pro AI voices in the country.
President Donald Trump told the nerds to go back to work. He responded with defiance by pushing for a faster American tempo in the AI race, directly rejecting demands for a slowdown.
Vice President JD Vance found a series of holes in the doomer play. He asked why the largest frontier companies are now begging the government to regulate them, likening the campaign to a possible “Trojan horse” that would protect incumbents under the guise of safety.
The U.S. Department of War (DOW) is pushing back too, with Pentagon CTO Emil Michael directly naming the Effective Altriusm ideology that poisons so much of the conversation in Tech.
A military does not win by intentionally slowing its own technological development while hoping the adversary reciprocates.
Some of the most influential forces in America’s technology sector are pushing back too.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has taken up the mantle as the tech world’s most fearless voice for sanity and human flourishing. At the All-In Summit, he described the fearmongering doomer campaign as “made up” nonsense. It’s worth watching the video below in its entirety:
Palantir is stepping up to the plate too and making the case for American AI sovereignty. Alex Karp and his company have boldly led on this front, rejecting the doomsday hypothesis about theoretical sentient AI systems while encouraging open source development and localized AI systems.
In recent months, these companies joined with major American technology corporations like Microsoft, Meta, IBM, Salesforce, and others in a call for keeping the AI industry open. They warned Congress against blanket restrictions on open-weight frontier models, arguing it would roll back human progress and it would create an unfair, lopsided playing field.
The ongoing doomer assault has unwittingly exposed the ugly side of the Effective Altruism/AI Doomer movement to the masses. As we’ve reported here in the Dossier, EA outfits have built an influential network in America around the notion of “existential risk” from AI. Their biggest donors, such as Kamala Harris megadonor Dustin Moskovitz (who also happens to be an early Anthropic investor), have directed untold millions (maybe billions at this point) toward AI-doom institutions.
The doomers hoped their targets would simply bend the knee and submit to their demands. But their campaign has backfired, and you can witness on social media and in official statements that it is producing robust organized opposition.
The doomers have awakened a sleeping giant. Many are discovering these nefarious, anticompetitive, and authoritarian actors in the AI space for the first time. Thankfully, we are now witnessing the creation of a continually expanding coalition that unites the Trump administration, America’s best thinkers and entrepreneurs, and citizens who believe America must be protected from those who would surrender our sovereignty to international committees and Chinese government bureaucrats.
Jordan - Anthropic is funding the "evaluators" and everyone else in the Doomer Camp. There’s big money in panic. There’s even bigger money in regulatory capture. That's their endgame.
Give Democrats control of AI and it will turn out just as well as their handling of our retirement, healthcare, and education systems.
Here's my Charts: Who Profits When AI “Might Kill Us All”?
https://directorblue.substack.com/p/who-profits-when-ai-might-kill-us
AI doomers = more fear porn. After the scamdemic, climate change hoax, Russia hoax aren’t we smarter enough to recognize fear porn when it shows up again?