The people actually building AI are not worried about AI destroying humanity. This is presented as news. Somewhere, a safety researcher just spilled coffee on a five-year existential risk assessment.
Multiple employees at leading AI companies have gone on record—in text exchanges, the most permanent and traceable medium available—to say that the doomsday stuff is overblown. One engineer at a major lab thinks the extinction risk talk is “hype.” Another believes we’re fine. A third probably has a LinkedIn post about being a “realist” that got 47 likes.
Why would people whose stock options depend on AI not being an extinction event downplay extinction event risks? A genuine mystery. The same way tobacco researchers in 1987 were skeptical that cigarettes could kill anyone.
The headline here isn’t that some AI workers are optimistic. It’s that we’ve reached a point where “the people building the potentially civilization-altering technology are not personally terrified of it” counts as a news story worth amplifying. That’s not reassurance. That’s a press release with a byline.
The real tell: none of these optimists are putting their own money into AI safety research. They’re just confident enough to keep shipping products and collecting paychecks. Confidence is not a risk assessment. It’s a career move with better optics.