How AI's Doomsday Prophets Built Their Influence
Source: The New York Times
Cal Newport traces the intellectual genealogy of AI existential risk discourse back to Eliezer Yudkowsky's rationalist movement, showing how a niche philosophical framework became the operating system for how industry leaders like Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis publicly frame AI safety concerns. The piece argues these are inherited narratives that shape which risks get funded, which get ignored, and which get performed for regulators—a mechanism that channels billions in AI safety spending and influences policy toward specific framings (superintelligence doom) over others (labor displacement, bias, surveillance).