AI safety voices blur real risk with extinction talk, warns researcher: wrong fear is the worst fear
Dr_Atoosa · x · 2026-09-11
The author traces an industry irony: OpenAI was founded over distrust of Google handling AGI, and Anthropic split off as the responsible safety-focused alternative — yet the two companies meant to slow Google down are now racing each other.
Her deeper concern is the public narrative: friends in climate science and indie film have turned anti-AI, losing their imagination of AI helping their goals after years of 'AI extinction' headlines. She criticizes parts of the AI safety/EA/rationalist community for conflating cheap AI risk talk with extinction risk, making 'real risk' a catch-all for everything from bio-terror to sandbox escapes — one of their worst disservices to the world.
Lesson: correcting the public imagination is hard but necessary — wrong fear is among the worst kinds, robbing people of clear thinking before any AGI could.
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