Imagine, for a moment, the following scenario. The Ford Motor Company releases a slick whitepaper making the alarming claim that they’re concerned their popular F-150 pickup trucks might soon spontaneously burst into flames. The report features a fancy animated graphic depicting a line of vehicles catching on fire, one after another, and concludes by acknowledging that this “possible future” would be bad, but that there’s nothing they can do about the issue so long as “less cautious” automobile companies exist.
This, of course, would be absurd. But it’s the exact type of communication some Frontier AI companies have been subjecting us to in recent years. Indeed, in this example, if you replace Ford Motor Company with Anthropic and F-150s bursting into flames with AI coding agents recursively self-improving themselves beyond human control, then you get the “When AI builds itself” report that Anthropic published earlier this month.
For me, that particular release was the last straw. This style of publicity, which I’ve taken to calling doom trolling, is so hypocritical, so drenched in cynicism, and so damaging to the mental health of tens of millions of people bombarded by the shrapnel from these anxiety bombs, that I decided I had to speak up.
The result of this conviction was an op-ed for the New York Times that appeared online last week and in print over the weekend. It was titled “Dear A.I. Companies, the Doom Trolling Has to Stop.” In the piece, I describe doom trolling as “one of the defining and most arresting properties of our current AI moment,” and declare it “morally indefensible.”
The ethical calculus here is clear.
If these companies truly believe that they’re developing products that might directly lead to widespread harm – from the destruction of our economy in the best case, to the destruction of our species in the worst – then the only morally-valid response would be to immediately stop these efforts, and apply every resource at their disposal to try to stop every other lab as well.
On the other hand, if they don’t really believe that their technology is likely to cause these harms, then they’re effectively “laundering the anxiety of millions to improve the financial fortunes of a vanishingly small number of major stockholders.” Such cynicism would be equally monstrous.
In my op-ed. I ask the leading AI labs to stop pretending they’re the reluctant stewards of an inevitable technology, and instead act like normal consumer product companies. This means that they should explain the benefits of their tools, justify their costs, and, of course, affirm that they have no intention of causing existential damage along the way.
As a computer scientist, I can assure you that it’s completely possible to build and promote very useful, if not revolutionary, new products on top of generative AI technology without any fears that you’re somehow advancing on a path toward massive societal or existential harm. Doom trolling isn’t a necessary, somber warning; it’s a choice.
Anyway, I recommend that you read the full piece for more details. But even if you don’t, I want to leave you with the idea that we don’t have to remain in a defensive crouch, putting up with the relentless abuse the AI labs are administering to our collective psyche. We can stand up and say: “Enough.”
