The contagion of fear
Bryan Cantrill rebuts ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon's claims that AI could kill humanity, warning such doomsday predictions cause unjustified panic.
Simon Willison highlights Bryan Cantrill's response to former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon's tweet that many Anthropic researchers believe AI 'could kill us all by the end of the decade'. Cantrill recounts his own youthful mistake of triggering unjustified panic among less technical peers and argues extinction claims rest on hand-wavy extrapolation such as 'hacking critical infrastructure'.
- Cantrill challenges Coxon's claim that Anthropic researchers expect AI extinction this decade
- Argues doom scenarios rely on hand-wavy extrapolation like hacking critical infrastructure
- Warns technical figures spreading panic harms less technical audiences
The contagion of fear Bryan Cantrill responds to the tweet by former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon confirming that many Anthropic researchers believe AI "could kill us all by the end of the decade". Bryan shares a story of his own youthful mistakes causing unjustified panic among less technical peers, and warns against doing the same: These ghoulish claims strike brazenly at the hearth, and given the obvious importance of AI, it is unsurprising that they have leapt into the mainstream, with people asking the natural question: how would that happen? The answers always rely on hand-wavy extrapolation into the future; for example, Jacob Coxon cites "hacking critical infrastructure" and…
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