Guillaume Verdon argues that AI doomerism is often a deliberate weaponization of public anxiety. He believes certain actors use fear-mongering to justify seizing control over AI development, convincing the public they shouldn't have access to powerful models for their own good, thereby creating a dangerous cognitive gap.

A high-profile media tour by an ex-Anthropic researcher warning of AI risk is theorized to be a planned "psyop." The goal would be to frighten lawmakers into passing regulations that benefit incumbents by stifling competition, particularly by making open-source AI development illegal.

Unlike previous technologies like the internet or smartphones, which enjoyed years of positive perception before scrutiny, the AI industry immediately faced a PR crisis of its own making. Leaders' early and persistent "AI will kill everyone" narratives, often to attract capital, have framed the public conversation around fear from day one.

The narrative around the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident was deliberately anthropomorphized to create public fear. This hysteria is then leveraged by incumbent labs and policymakers to call for regulation, which would create barriers to entry and solidify a duopoly market structure.

The narrative that AI risk-awareness is just "doomerism" is a recent phenomenon, strategically pushed by those who stand to benefit commercially from unchecked AI development. In reality, concerns about superintelligence risks have been foundational to the AI industry for decades.

High-profile AI 'whistleblowers' may be part of an orchestrated campaign by well-funded groups. This strategy aims to create public fear, pushing for regulations like a federal AI department, which ultimately benefits the companies advocating for it through regulatory capture.

AI leaders' apocalyptic messaging about sentient AI and job destruction is a strategy to attract massive investment and potentially trigger regulatory capture. This "AB testing" of messages creates a severe PR problem, making AI deeply unpopular with the public.

Anthropic and other frontier labs are accused of deliberately engineering and amplifying fear about AI (e.g., job loss, existential risk). This "fear-mongering" is not idle speculation but a calculated media campaign designed to pressure governments into creating regulations that would favor incumbents.

Viral warnings about AI extinction from Anthropic researchers might not be spontaneous whistleblowing but a coordinated PR campaign. The rapid, widespread media coverage, pre-vetted articles, and connections to specific 'doomer' groups suggest an orchestrated effort ('astroturfing') to push a narrative and influence public opinion and regulation.