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AI’s doomsday hype highlights the dark art of marketing
Artificial intelligence companies are using fear as the ultimate sales pitch.
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Anthropic warns its forthcoming Mythos model can find flaws in an array of software programs, operating systems and browsers.
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Parmy Olson
Since the beginning of the boom in generative artificial intelligence, technology leaders have talked up the dangers of the very systems they’re trying to sell. It’s a paradoxical marketing strategy and, unfortunately for some of the industries and companies deemed most vulnerable to disruption, it’s worked brilliantly. Fear, it turns out, is the ultimate sales pitch.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman used to say the technology behind ChatGPT could threaten human civilisation itself: “We face existential risk,” he said in 2023. That flavour of doom mongering has become passe, judging by the new boogeymen Mr Altman and his peers have been pointing to lately: AI as a job killer and a threat to cybersecurity.
