{"id":116083,"date":"2025-05-15T18:27:35","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T22:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/?post_type=ftm_article&#038;p=116083"},"modified":"2025-05-16T08:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T12:58:08","slug":"ai-panic","status":"publish","type":"ftm_article","link":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/ai-panic","title":{"rendered":"Media has a blind spot when covering the AI panic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u201cTHE END OF HUMANITY\u201d screamed the <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TIME\/status\/1663939590908985348\">TIME magazine cover<\/a> in June 2023, with two letters in \u201chumanity\u201d brightly highlighted: AI.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was seven months after OpenAI launched a user-friendly chatbot named ChatGPT. At that time, the media was flooded with doomsday scenarios about the \u201cexistential risks of AI\u201d and how it\u2019s \u201cthe start of an AI takeover.\u201d It reached absurd levels with headlines like \u201cHumans Could Go Extinct When Evil Superhuman AI Robots Rise Up Like the Terminator!\u201d Shortly after, stringent AI bills and policies were <a href=\"https:\/\/iapp.org\/media\/pdf\/resource_center\/global_ai_law_policy_tracker.pdf\">proposed<\/a> around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-we-were-told-that-ai-will-kill-us-all\">We were told that \u201cAI will kill us all.\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The public\u2019s understanding of emerging technologies, especially AI, depends heavily on how journalists frame their stories. As someone who has analyzed the technological discourse for two decades, I found this round of mass hysteria particularly frustrating, so I decided to take a step back and attempt to better understand why we were being bombarded by these fatalistic headlines. Who are the forces pushing this into the mainstream?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I initiated an investigative journey that uncovered the leading figures, organizations, and events shaping one of the most consequential debates of our time. In the process, I fell down the rabbit hole of two overlapping movements: \u201crationality\u201d and \u201ceffective altruism.\u201d The picture of their roles in financing and promoting AI doomerism quickly became clear, but when I looked for media coverage on these influential movements, I found little in-depth reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, the biggest funders of these movements \u2014 billionaire Dustin Moskovitz, billionaire Jaan Tallinn, and former-billionaire-turned-felon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/archives\/opa\/pr\/samuel-bankman-fried-sentenced-25-years-his-orchestration-multiple-fraudulent-schemes\">Sam Bankman-Fried<\/a> \u2014 were rarely mentioned. This specific trio is responsible for the proliferation of hundreds of organizations devoted to \u201cexistential risks from AI.\u201d This seems like an important piece of the puzzle to share with the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The following segments represent a small portion of my upcoming book on this topic. I present them today because of their relevance: They highlight the media\u2019s crucial role in our shared AI discourse and suggest how it can do better.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s essential \u2014 and totally possible \u2014 to improve the coverage of AI in general and AI doomerism in particular.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-if-it-bleeds-it-leads\">\u201cIf it bleeds, it leads.\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The problems start with a false dichotomy. We are presented with two main visions of the future: utopian or dystopian. AI will save us all, or AI will kill us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It makes our AI discourse shallow and misleading. In reality, there are endless options in between those two extremes. The other framings are covered by the media, but they are not debated as much or given enough attention; they are less \u201csexy.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What the general public is getting is the science-fiction version of the AI story. Columbia University\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cjr.org\/tow_center\/media-coverage-chatgpt.php\">How the Media Is Covering ChatGPT<\/a>\u201d study, released in May 2023, found that the initial curiosity over generative AI was covered with extreme utopian and dystopian depictions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s the Hollywood-ification of the public\u2019s understanding of AI,\u201d said Nick Diakopoulos, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>\u201cPeople are naturally inclined to engage more with threatening news, the dark side of AI versus the bright side.\u201d<\/p><cite>Matthew Hutson<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>So far, the dystopian depictions have far outweighed the utopian ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41599-023-02282-w\">What they\u2019re not telling you about ChatGPT<\/a>,\u201d an analysis of AI media coverage in the UK in early-2023, found that headlines were often sensationalized and tended to focus on the warnings of \u201cimpending dangers.\u201d Just 13% of the headlines analyzed were related to helpful or otherwise positive applications of AI.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two famous phrases \u2014 \u201cBad is stronger than good\u201d and \u201cIf it bleeds, it leads\u201d \u2014 help explain the media\u2019s choice to lean into the negative: It\u2019s the news people will most likely read.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In February 2023, The New York Times published a disturbing conversation between Kevin Roose and Microsoft\u2019s new Bing chatbot. It has since become known as the \u201cSydney tried to break up my marriage\u201d story. The front-page headline said, \u201cBing\u2019s Chatbot Drew Me In and Creeped Me Out.\u201d In an interview about Sydney, Microsoft\u2019s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Scott, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/23733388\/microsoft-kevin-scott-open-ai-chat-gpt-bing-github-word-excel-outlook-copilots-sydney\">mentioned<\/a> it was \u201cone of the most-read stories in New York Times history.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In mid-2023, Steve Rose from The Guardian shared in a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/steverose7\/status\/1677353629634764800\">since-deleted tweet<\/a> that \u201cso far, \u2018AI worst case scenarios\u2019 has had 5 x as many readers as \u2018AI best case scenarios.\u2019\u201d The Guardian\u2019s headline for the \u201cworst case scenarios\u201d piece quoted the writer Eliezer Yudkowsky: \u201cEveryone on Earth could fall over dead in the same second.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Ian Hogarth, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/03895dc4-a3b7-481e-95cc-336a524f2ac2\">We must slow down the race to God-like AI<\/a>,\u201d similarly <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/soundboy\/status\/1646783609603338240\">shared<\/a> that his essay was \u201cthe most read story\u201d on the Financial Times website the day it was published. That piece claimed that God-like AI \u201ccould usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the human race.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>As for <em>why <\/em>these pieces perform so well, people are simply hardwired to gravitate toward negative coverage, according to Matthew Hutson from The New Yorker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn general, in psychology, people have a bias to pay more attention to negative things than positive things,\u201d Hutson told me. \u201cPeople are naturally inclined to engage more with threatening news, the dark side of AI versus the bright side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNews is inherently negative \u2014 it in no way surprises me that the negative scenario gets more clicks,\u201d said Ryan Heath, who was at Axios at the time of my interview.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>&#8220;If we want a well-informed public, we need to figure out how to raise the quality of journalism consumed by ordinary people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<cite>Timothy B. Lee<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The media also tends to view negative news as more worthy of publication since, usually, \u201cwhere there\u2019s smoke, there\u2019s fire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s no accountability in congratulating a company for achieving great AI,\u201d said Heath. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting and important to share it, but it\u2019s not making anyone accountable, which is one of the big driving functions of the news.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cToday\u2019s highly competitive media industry creates bad incentives that discourage reporters from doing in-depth or nuanced journalism,\u201d journalist Timothy B. Lee wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/asteriskmag.com\/issues\/06\/debugging-tech-journalism\">2024 essay<\/a> for Asterisk Magazine. \u201cShallow or sensational stories about technology require less resources to produce and often attract more attention from readers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere is great technology journalism being done today, but it tends to appear in specialist publications that cater to tech-savvy audiences,\u201d Lee continued. \u201cIf we want a well-informed public, we need to figure out how to raise the quality of journalism consumed by ordinary people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-extreme-implications-extreme-sentiment\">Extreme implications. Extreme sentiment.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The media opting to focus on the negative is not a new concept for me \u2014 I covered the discourse around social media and Big Tech in my previous book, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.niritweissblatt.com\/\">The Techlash<\/a>\u201d \u2014 but the panic around AI has been so much more extreme.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As part of my \u201cMedia Coverage of AI\u201d research project, I asked prominent AI journalists why they think this has been the case.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou could potentially do so much more with AI than you ever could with Facebook, so I think people intuitively understand it,\u201d said Heath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere have been a lot of transformative technologies, but not all of them are seen as generating existential risk,\u201d said Hutson. \u201cAI is different in that it can potentially have agency, and it can grow exponentially, so it\u2019s kind of qualitatively different from all the other technologies.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSocial media is scary, but still just people being people,\u201d he continued. \u201cMaybe we changed our behavior somewhat, but it wasn\u2019t creating new people with unforeseen capabilities in the way that AI can create new beings with unforeseen capabilities. It\u2019s just a completely different kind of beast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The scientific uncertainty about AI\u2019s trajectory and potential impacts creates a unique mystique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s just no way of knowing a lot of this stuff,\u201d said Will Knight, a senior writer at WIRED. \u201cI talked to Demis [Hassabis] one time, and he said, \u2018Anybody who says that they know what this is going to do is wrong. We don\u2019t know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>&#8220;Everyone has grown up watching sci-fi about AI taking over the world &#8230; We have all been primed and conditioned to expect this to happen.&#8221;<\/p><cite>Benj Edwards<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Karen Hao, who was at the Wall Street Journal at the time of the interview, but is now at The Atlantic, further emphasized that the difference between AI and social media coverage is due to the nature of the technology.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIts implications are more extreme, so it generates more extreme sentiment,\u201d she told me. \u201cThe long-term worries are actually based on real short-term worries, which will intensify if we do not take care of them right now. We can see the current harms, so we fear what would happen with all the different misuses later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAI is particularly prone to this hysteria of danger because like 99% of our cultural fabric is made up of popular media, and everyone has grown up watching sci-fi about AI taking over the world in terms of Terminator becoming sentient or C-3PO walking around,\u201d said Benj Edwards, Ars Technica\u2019s senior AI reporter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe have all been primed and conditioned to expect this to happen,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about creating artificial life and fantasizing about it since ancient times, and it\u2019s like we could become gods ourselves, creating a new life form. That\u2019s a very powerful metaphor that has persisted through fiction for 5,000 years. So, it goes back. Way back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-missing-context-rationality-and-effective-altruism\">The missing context: rationality and effective altruism<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Context isn\u2019t a nice-to-have; it\u2019s crucial for accurate reporting. But when news outlets uncritically quote warnings of an impending AI catastrophe, they rarely mention the two main movements behind this narrative: rationality and effective altruism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Admittedly, working this context into stories is a hard task.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because their philosophical debates are filled with jargon and concepts that are hard to explain, the rationality and effective altruism movements are difficult to describe to a general audience. However, omitting their role in shaping AI discourse leaves audiences with a distorted view of who\u2019s driving the conversation and why they chose that path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Rationality: <\/strong>Originating from online hubs like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lesswrong.com\/\">LessWrong forum<\/a> and lengthy blog posts by thinkers like the aforementioned <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lesswrong.com\/users\/eliezer_yudkowsky\">Eliezer Yudkowsky<\/a>, the rationality movement strives to improve \u201creasoning and decision-making\u201d and teach long-term strategic thinking.<br><br>Its leading figures \u2014 Yudkowsky, Tallinn, Nick Bostrom, and Scott Alexander \u2014 see advanced AI as an existential risk to humanity. Among its leading organizations are the <a href=\"https:\/\/intelligence.org\/\">Machine Intelligence Research Institute<\/a> (MIRI), co-founded by Yudkowsky in 2000, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rationality.org\/\">Center for Applied Rationality<\/a> (CFAR), which is focused on \u201cdeveloping clear thinking for the sake of humanity\u2019s future.\u201d<br><br>In 2016, co-founder Anna Salamon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lesswrong.com\/posts\/bMXurpN9qj8NWZKDR\/why-cfar-s-mission\">wrote that<\/a> \u201cCFAR&#8217;s mission is to improve the sanity\/thinking skill of those who are most likely to actually usefully impact the world.\u201d That same year, New York Times Magazine journalist Jennifer Kahn attended a CFAR workshop and was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/01\/17\/magazine\/the-happiness-code.html\">told by one of the participants<\/a> that \u201cself-help is just the gateway. The real goal is: Save the world.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Effective altruism:<\/strong> Emerging as rationality\u2019s twin sibling, effective altruism insists that charitable giving and policy priorities be guided by utilitarian ethics. Figures such as Moskovitz, Bankman-Fried, William MacAskill, and Toby Ord, and organizations such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org\/\">Centre for Effective Altruism<\/a> (CEA) and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.openphilanthropy.org\/\">Open Philanthropy<\/a> drove the AI narrative leveraging this logic: If AI might one day wipe out humanity, even with low probability, that possibility warrants outsized attention and funding today.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Both movements have promoted this ideology by investing heavily in \u201cAI safety\u201d and \u201cAI alignment,\u201d which aims to align future AI systems with human values. Effective altruism donors have injected hundreds of millions of dollars into AI safety work through think tanks, research grants, scholarships, and, weirdly enough, luxurious research retreats (e.g., <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/article\/2024\/may\/12\/wytham-abbey-sale-effective-altruism-group-evf\">Wytham Abbey castle<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Omitting the role of the rationality and effective altruism movements in shaping AI discourse leaves audiences with a distorted view of who\u2019s driving the conversation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>These subcultures have overlapping communities with shared values, and their borders are so blurry that they merge all the time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m slightly conflating EA, rationalism, and AI doomerism rather than doing the hard work of teasing them apart,\u201d Alexander wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.astralcodexten.com\/p\/in-continued-defense-of-effective\">post<\/a> on Astral Codex Ten, his blog that grew out of the rationalist community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s \u201chard work\u201d because, as David Morris <a href=\"https:\/\/davidzmorris.substack.com\/p\/deepseek-and-the-ai-murder-cult\">explained<\/a> in a January 2025 edition of his Dark Markets newsletter, \u201cEAs and rationalists are effectively a Venn diagram forming something close to a circle.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Vox\u2019s Kelsey Piper <a href=\"https:\/\/podchaser-podchaser-frontend-staging.podchaser.com\/podcasts\/unexplainable-1602113\/episodes\/good-robot-3-lets-fix-everythi-244456177\/transcript\">described it<\/a> similarly on the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/402418\/artificial-intelligence-good-robot-podcast-openai-chatgpt-ethics-discrimination\">Good Robot<\/a>\u201d podcast:<\/p>\n\n\n<div \n\tclass=\"f-block f-block--blockquote f-block---simple f-blockquote border-l-10 border-gray-200 pl-7 dark:border-gray-800 dark:text-gray-200 text-gray-800 f-content\"\n\t\t>\n\t\t\t<p><!-- wp:paragraph -->There was pretty early on a ton of overlap in people who found the effective altruism worldview compelling and people who were rationalists. Probably because of a shared fondness for thought experiments with pretty big real-world implications, which you then proceed to take very seriously.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a cult, but it\u2019s a religion. Most of the world\u2019s recorded religions have developed ideas about how the world ends, what humanity needs to do to prepare for some kind of final judgment.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->In the Bay Area and on Oxford\u2019s campus, effective altruists started to hear from rationalists they were in community with about what an apocalypse could look like. And of course, since a lot of rationalists thought that AI was the highest-stakes issue of our time, they started trying to pitch people in the effective altruism movement, like, \u2018Look, getting AI right is a major priority for charitable giving.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/wp:paragraph --><\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>MIRI and CFAR were explicitly pitched as the top priorities for donations if you want to save the world from an \u201cunfriendly AI.\u201d As for <em>how<\/em> unfriendly, Yudkowsky has speculated that giving an AI a goal as seemingly straightforward as \u201cmake diamonds\u201d could lead to the death of everyone on Earth, as the AI would use the atoms that make up humans to meet its objective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such scenarios are riddled with holes, but at this point, the validity of the claims hardly matters \u2014 it\u2019s upholding the collective storyline that counts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat they have achieved in terms of the AI debate is, I think, remarkable: They\u2019ve taken the niche, practically dystopian-science-fiction idea of AI risk and made people take it seriously,\u201d journalist Tom Chivers wrote in his book \u201cThe Rationalist&#8217;s Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity&#8217;s Future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-troubling-influence\">A troubling influence<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The media might fail to adequately acknowledge the role of the effective altruism and rationality movements in shaping the AI discourse, but members of the movements themselves are more than willing to take credit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In November 2024, Oliver Habryka, who runs LessWrong, bragged about how the entangled community had influenced important decision makers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI think the extent of our memetic reach was unclear for a few years, but there is now less uncertainty,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lesswrong.com\/posts\/5n2ZQcbc7r4R8mvqc\/the-lightcone-is-nothing-without-its-people\">wrote<\/a> Habryka. \u201cAmong the leadership of the biggest AI capability companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Deepmind, xAI), at least 4\/5 have clearly been heavily influenced by ideas from LessWrong.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Habryka then offered this \u201cquick rundown\u201d of the influenced:<\/p>\n\n\n<div \n\tclass=\"f-block f-block--blockquote f-block---simple f-blockquote border-l-10 border-gray-200 pl-7 dark:border-gray-800 dark:text-gray-200 text-gray-800 f-content\"\n\t\t>\n\t\t\t<p>Shane Legg is a DeepMind cofounder and early LessWrong poster directly crediting Eliezer [Yudkowsky] for working on AGI. Demis [Hassabis] has also frequently referenced LW ideas and presented at both FHI [Bostrom\u2019s Future of Humanity Institute] and the Singularity Summit [organized by MIRI]. OpenAI\u2019s founding team and early employees were heavily influenced by LW ideas (and Ilya [Sutskever] was at my CFAR workshop in 2015). Elon Musk has clearly read a bunch of LessWrong and was strongly influenced by Superintelligence [Bostrom\u2019s book], which itself was heavily influenced by LW. A substantial fraction of Anthropic\u2019s leadership team actively reads and\/or writes on LessWrong.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The movements\u2019 influence \u2014 and the media\u2019s blind spot \u2014 extends into politics as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, when the Future of Life Institute (FLI) <a href=\"https:\/\/futureoflife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/FLI_Vision_Into_Action_Senate_AI_Roadmap.pdf\">lobbies Washington<\/a> to introduce stringent regulation on <em>current <\/em>AI models, the media can (and should) mention that FLI is no longer a small nonprofit as, in 2021, it received <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/03\/25\/a-665m-crypto-war-chest-roils-ai-safety-fight-00148621\">more than half a billion dollars<\/a> through a crypto donation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By failing to include context about the people and foundational ideologies attempting to shape the AI landscape \u2014 who they are, what motivates them, and who\u2019s backing them \u2014 journalists make it harder for the public to evaluate the hyperbolic claims and assess their credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>While the AI optimists build, the AI doomsayers seek to pause\/stop their work by any means necessary. They are not the same.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking at the AI discourse, rationalists and effective altruists tend to extrapolate current tech trends indefinitely into the future until we arrive at one of two scenarios: the AI apocalypse or a post-Singularity golden age.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The overpromised utopia has its own flaws (e.g., inflated expectations), but in this piece, I\u2019m focusing on the dystopian narrative since it has a differentiated impact on the here and now.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the AI optimists build, the AI doomsayers seek to pause\/stop their work by any means necessary. They are not the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since, based on the doomers\u2019 logic, the survival of the human species is at stake, everything is on the table: computer surveillance, shutting down <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/aipolicyus\/status\/1777689593774555546\">open-source models<\/a>, imposing civil and criminal liability on developers, giving governments exclusive control over labs, banning private commercial AI development\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201cends justify the means\u201d mentality spirals into dangerous territory with talk of violent acts against AI labs (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DrTechlash\/status\/1896945702418395165\">burn them down<\/a>) and \u201cAGI developers\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DrTechlash\/status\/1866249589801861491\">a bullet through their head<\/a>). The discourse includes nuclear exchange between nations and <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6266923\/ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-open-letter-not-enough\/\">air strikes against data centers<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These are all suggestions from the past two years. Imagined dystopian fears have turned into real dystopian \u201csolutions.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-toward-better-ai-reporting\">Toward better AI reporting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the past year, the vibe around AI has shifted away from it being a threat and toward it being an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aipanic.news\/i\/161278439\/the-world-has-changed-its-ai-action-time\">opportunity<\/a>. In response, the doomers learned to pivot away from the existential\u2011risk jargon \u2014 \u201chuman extinction\u201d by \u201csuperintelligence\u201d \u2014 and toward a more palatable \u201ccatastrophic dual\u2011use\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsecurity.ai\/\">national security<\/a>\u201d framing. This shift allows some of the authoritarian proposals above to resurface under a new banner and with renewed urgency.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Journalists should be taking advantage of the fact that evidence of doomsayers constantly moving the goalposts can be found all over the internet.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When talking to someone like Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety, for example, they might point out, \u201cYou say you\u2019re only concerned with the next frontier models, and there\u2019s nothing to worry about <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DrTechlash\/status\/1907147545924804729\">the current models<\/a>, but here are your lobbying efforts to ban not even the current models, but <a href=\"https:\/\/1a3orn.com\/sub\/machine-learning-bans.html\">the previous ones<\/a>.\u201d Or, \u201cYou once said that slowing down America would <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/arqYqHX13eM?feature=shared&amp;t=2452\">cause China to slow down<\/a> as well. Still think that\u2019s the case?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>The ask from the media is not to denounce every effective altruist or rationalist\u2019s (rephrased) claim, but to situate their warnings within the networks that produce them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The purpose of journalism is to speak truth to power, and the media shouldn\u2019t be giving this powerful group of people an easy pass. There\u2019s a public service mentality that needs to be implemented here. Some leading AI journalists (including the wonderful interviewees for my study) write about these power players, but it should be more widespread.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Effective altruists and rationalists will continue to adapt their strategy in response to the AI race, but their storyline will always remain the same: \u201cWe\u2019re saving humanity from imminent doom.\u201d The ask from the media, then, is not to denounce every effective altruist or rationalist\u2019s (rephrased) claim, but to situate their warnings within the networks that produce them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are four actionable steps news organizations can take to raise the quality of their AI coverage:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Provide context:<\/strong> Every time a news story evokes fears of out-of-control AI, ask three simple questions: Who is warning? What frameworks shaped those warnings? Who underwrites their work? Basically, whenever people make sweeping predictions in a state of uncertainty, ask what motivates such forecasts.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<ol start=\"2\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Break the binary:<\/strong> Move beyond \u201cutopia vs. apocalypse.\u201d Correct misconceptions and explain what AI actually can and can\u2019t do.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<ol start=\"3\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Avoid anthropomorphism:<\/strong> Attributing human characteristics to AI misleads people about the risks it poses. Steer clear of language that implies AI has human-like motivations, feelings, or other human traits (AI \u201cwants,\u201d AI \u201cbehaves,\u201d etc.).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<ol start=\"4\" class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Reward nuance:<\/strong> Instead of the loudest doom\u2011and\u2011gloom pundits, highlight underrepresented, balanced voices that provide evidence for their claims.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>As author and futurist Daniel Jeffries wrote in his essay \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/danieljeffries.substack.com\/p\/the-middle-path-for-ai\">The Middle Path for AI<\/a>,\u201d \u201cPeople love to spin tales of AI doom or AI utopia, but it\u2019s time to take a realistic look at AI. The biggest problem is not whether we need more utopias or dystopias. What we most desperately need is a heavy dose of realism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An informed public, guided by rigorous, contextualized, nuanced stories, is our best defense against both overpromised dreams and paralyzing fears. Let\u2019s shift the AI coverage toward the \u201cAI realism\u201d that the public and policymakers desperately need.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>We\u2019d love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at&nbsp;<a href=\"mailto:tips@freethink.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">tips@freethink.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When news outlets quote warnings of an impending AI catastrophe, they rarely mention the two main movements behind this narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":116098,"template":"","ftm_taxonomy_fields":[46],"ftm_taxonomy_challenges":[],"ftm_taxonomy_statuses":[36],"ftm_taxonomy_hidden_tags":[],"class_list":["post-116083","ftm_article","type-ftm_article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ftm_taxonomy_fields-ai","ftm_taxonomy_statuses-featured"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.9 (Yoast SEO v26.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Media has a blind spot when covering the AI panic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When news outlets quote warnings of an impending AI catastrophe, they rarely mention the two main movements behind this narrative.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/ai-panic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Media has a blind spot when covering the AI panic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When news outlets quote warnings of an impending AI catastrophe, they rarely mention the two main movements behind this narrative.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/ai-panic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Freethink\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-05-16T12:58:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/red.jpg?resize=1200,630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"The discourse on AI risk is shaped by two communities: rationality and effective altruism. 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