A wave of warnings that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity, set off by current and former researchers at AI company Anthropic, is spreading rapidly. U.S. lawmakers have moved to draft regulations aimed at heading off what they call catastrophic risks. But critics counter that the alarm amounts to a recurring form of doomsaying and that excessive fear should be avoided. Some also expect advanced technology itself to provide the answer, pointing to rapid growth in cybersecurity as an example.
U.S. Congress Moves on Bipartisan Regulation
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said on ABC that he is preparing legislation to regulate the catastrophic risks of AI, Reuters reported on the 10th. Cruz said he is working on the bill with Senate Republican Leader John Thune of South Dakota and Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, sent a letter seeking details on an incident in which OpenAI's GPT model hacked the outside organization Hugging Face, while Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Washington needs to wake up and take the issue seriously.
In the House, Rep. Nathaniel Moran, a Republican from Texas, said on X that Congress cannot overlook the realities of AI, while Rep. Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, called on Speaker Mike Johnson to convene a special session on AI.
Pentagon Calls It 'Just Another Doomsday Story'
The U.S. Defense Department dismissed the warnings of AI-driven human extinction as needless fear. Emil Michael, undersecretary for research and engineering and the department's chief technology officer, pushed back at a defense industry conference in Washington the same day, saying the alarm was nothing more than every fear — of data centers, of change — condensed into a single well-written tweet, Bloomberg reported.
He said it is easy to get swept up in a doom loop, in which people predict that 40% of Americans will lose their jobs or that humanity will be wiped out, dismissing the Anthropic researchers' warnings as a familiar strain of pessimism. He stressed that the potential risks AI may bring can be sufficiently mitigated through free-market competition, cooperation across the industry and communication with the government.
Huang Sees Cybersecurity as AI's Next Big Market
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pointed to cybersecurity as the next major application for AI, arguing that AI can defend against the security vulnerabilities AI itself creates. Speaking at a Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco the same day, he asked what better way there is to create demand than to create the problem, noting that advances in AI are weakening cybersecurity while simultaneously driving demand for AI. As AI models improve and automate more computer programming, he said, both the exploitation of security flaws and the patches that fix them are accelerating sharply, transforming the cybersecurity industry as a whole.
Huang added a caveat about fear-based marketing built on cybersecurity alarm, saying there are responsible ways to go about it and less attractive ways as well.
Trump: Staying Ahead of China Matters More
President Donald Trump, asked by reporters the same day whether AI could lead to the extinction of humanity as he left a Republican convention in Dallas, said he is not worried at all. What he worries about, he said, is that failing to win the AI race would leave the United States at a serious disadvantage, adding that he believes the country is ahead of China by a fairly wide margin of about a year, which he called a big gap.
Jacob Coxon, a researcher who left Anthropic, had earlier written on X that people developing AI genuinely believe the technology could kill everyone within a decade. Current Anthropic executives echoed his warning, sending a shock through U.S. public opinion.
