Technology revolutions in the digital age are typically accompanied by optimism and excitement \u2014 recall Steve Jobs basking in thunderous applause as he introduced the iPhone in 2007. The major A.I. companies seem to be following a darker and weirder strategy: They like to solemnly describe the harms that their models will cause, while acting helpless to do anything about it.<\/p>\n
Anthropic recently dropped a classic of the form: a scary-sounding report titled \u201cWhen A.I. builds itself\u201d that claims A.I. could be moving closer to the capability of \u201cautonomously designing and developing its own successor.\u201d The company hopes that this recursive self-improvement will bring \u201cenormous good\u201d to the world, but also openly worries it might lead to humans \u201closing control\u201d of these systems.<\/p>\n
The public reaction to this report focused on a section that seemed to call for a worldwide pause on A.I. development. But if you read more carefully, it becomes clear that a pause isn\u2019t actually what Anthropic proposes. Its report says that \u201cif it were possible\u201d to slow down the technology, then we should, but so long as the \u201cleast cautious\u201d actors were advancing full speed, it suggests that Anthropic will have no choice but to do the same.<\/p>\n
Like a cat leaving a dead bird at your doorstep, Anthropic catalogs the grim future that its products might produce, shrugs its shoulders and then returns to its furious efforts to make these warnings a reality.<\/p>\n
Anthropic isn\u2019t alone in this nihilism. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, frequently makes bleak claims. He compared the company\u2019s large-language-model efforts to the development of the atomic bomb, and he posted an image on social media of the Death Star from \u201cStar Wars\u201d in conjunction with the release of GPT-5. He\u2019s also argued, many times, that the only response to the economic damage that A.I. tools will inevitably produce would be to institute wide-scale financial support from the government, such as a universal basic income or a public wealth fund.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s call this strategy \u201cdoom trolling.\u201d It\u2019s one of the defining and most arresting properties of our current A.I. moment, and I\u2019ve come to believe that it\u2019s morally indefensible.<\/p>\n
There are really only two options for the intentions of A.I. companies when they engage in doom trolling. The first is that they actually believe that the systems they\u2019re building have a nontrivial chance of producing massively disruptive events \u2014 from destroying the economy in the best case to wiping out our species in the worst. If this were true, every reasonable ethical system would argue that there is only one acceptable response: to immediately stop working on any product that might accelerate such a future, and lobby with all of your resources to help force other A.I. companies to do the same. From a moral perspective, any other reaction would be monstrous.<\/p>\n
The second option is that these A.I. companies aren\u2019t really concerned about these risks, and that they\u2019re injecting these doses of unresolvable doom for other reasons. They might want to amplify the perceived power of their technology at a time when they\u2019re setting up their initial public offerings. Or they hope their performative reports and somber interviews will help them compete for top engineering talent coming from a Silicon Valley culture that\u2019s steeped in this type of doomerism. The venture capitalist and A.I. adviser David Sacks recently suggested that Anthropic was using fear-mongering tactics as a method of \u201cregulatory capture,\u201d which can impede upstart competitors. Any of these reasons would mean that these companies are laundering the anxiety of millions to improve the financial fortunes of a vanishingly small number of major stockholders. This cynicism would be equally monstrous.<\/p>\n
When it comes to A.I., we\u2019ve become so used to this tone of helpless, stress-inducing prognostication that we\u2019ve lost sight of its strangeness. Imagine if the Ford Motor Company put out a report saying that it feared its popular F-150 trucks might soon start bursting into flames, but that there was nothing the company could do about it because automotive technology was too inevitable and important to slow down. You\u2019re probably struggling to picture this scenario because no reasonable consumer product company would ever act like this. <\/p>\n
The A.I. companies could start behaving the same way. To do so would require that they stop treating A.I. like some inevitable force that they\u2019re struggling to steward. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s a collection of specific tools that these companies are choosing to design and sell according to specific business plans. Accordingly, they need to talk about their offerings like any other consumer product. This means explaining clearly whom these products are for, justifying their benefits and, critically, taking full responsibility for any harm they might cause. Just because A.I. currently enjoys a high-tech sheen doesn\u2019t make it exceptional with respect to common-sense safety standards.<\/p>\n
If these A.I. companies insist on continuing to pretend that they\u2019re merely stoic observers of an unavoidable dystopian future, then perhaps it\u2019s time to force the issue. As consumers, we can refuse to play the doom-trolling game. Next time Anthropic releases a dire report, or Sam Altman\u2019s voice cracks as he imagines the disruption that OpenAI is unleashing, we can pivot back to the pragmatic: \u201cOK, but what benefits am I getting by spending $1,000 a month on tokens?\u201d If they continue to ratchet up the doom, then perhaps it\u2019s time to transform dread into ridicule: The earnest pseudoscience of Anthropic\u2019s white papers already borders on satire. The current zeitgeist surrounding A.I. encourages a fretful submission to these tech leaders, but this could rapidly change.<\/p>\n