AI doomsday talk is a smokescreen, says physicist Ulf Danielsson

Ulf Danielsson, professor in theoretical physics, argues that AI companies' doomsday warnings about superintelligence are a smokescreen that distracts from real harms and their own pursuit of power and influence. Danielsson criticizes companies like Anthropic for claiming to have lost control of their creations and warning of a 10 percent extinction risk, suggesting these narratives inflate their importance for investors. He highlights concrete dangers, including AI-enabled cyberattacks, political disinformation, and threats to human creativity, which he says are ignored. He contends that language models operate in a world of syntax without semantic understanding or physical relation, making apocalyptic scenarios absurd. Danielsson concludes that the primary purpose of these prophecies is distraction, and advocates for regulation and caution rather than adopting technology for its own sake.