Tressie McMillan Cottom считает, что текущий паника вокруг ИИ — это стратегическое отвлечение от политических и экономических выгод индустрии. Following incidents of AI agents going rogue, including a hack of the developer platform Hugging Face, prominent figures like Dario Amodei and Sam Altman have called for global slowdowns. Elon Musk and Google's Demis Hassabis have echoed these sentiments.

However, the author suggests this urgency serves to obscure the industry's efforts to secure political favor. Tech CEOs have cultivated relationships with the Trump administration and are now funneling money to both major parties ahead of midterms. The piece contends that the narrative of existential risk is deployed to prevent public deliberation in favor of manufactured panic.

By focusing on hypothetical doomsday scenarios, the industry avoids scrutiny of immediate harms like data centers and nondisclosure agreements. Ultimately, the author posits that the AI narrative serves the interests of tech oligarchs seeking to maintain dominance without public consent.