Fears of artificial intelligence have peaked yet again this week, as AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who spent years at OpenAI and around two months at Anthropic, very publicly resigned, stoking the public’s greatest fears that AI will be the end of humanity by 2030.
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The public has latched onto the fear, but questions still remain, especially as AI companies, politicians, and non-profit groups all have plenty to gain from the fearmongering. Even Coxon was revealed to have questionable motives, having received scholarships from non-profits bankrolled by anti-AI philanthropists, as well as the questionable spontaneity of the resignation, which coincided with an exclusive WSJ report and immediate promotions by those leading anti-AI non-profits.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who may be one of the leading global experts on artificial intelligence and one known for a level head, sought to lessen fears about Coxon’s story yesterday at a Goldman Sachs conference. In remarks, he reminded people that AI companies gain from spreading fear, as people in support of AI seem to be losing ground in this public battle.
🚨 Nvidia’s @JensenHuang has a message for the AI doomers: Don’t confuse fear with fact.
“The end of humanity — it’s complete nonsense.”
“Destroy half of the American jobs — complete nonsense.”https://t.co/491HfIFqrW
— Innovation Council (@innovationcncl) September 10, 2026
“And what better way to create demand than to create a problem?” Huang said Thursday. “Who doesn’t want their market to be hysterical about their product and line up around the corner for it?”
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His comments mirrored similar ones he made just months ago, where he denied that AI will be the end of humanity, or even that it will overwhelmingly destroy jobs, describing such claims “complete nonsense.”
“The fact that this is going to be the end of humanity — it’s complete nonsense,” he said in July. “The fact that this is going to destroy half of the American jobs is complete nonsense.”
Idk man maybe a random 27-year-old British guy who worked at Anthropic for 2 months knows something that Jensen Huang doesn’t https://t.co/8oLOMRnBIX
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) September 10, 2026
It remains to be seen who will be right, but more importantly, who will win the side of public opinion. Right now, the momentum seems to be with the doomers.
Again, it’s important to remind ourselves what AI is, and what it isn’t. Right now, “AI” is a massively complex series of “if, then” trees. They are not genuine self-thinking machines, capable of ’80s science fiction, at least not yet. Plenty has to be said about the evil AI can help people do. Earlier this week, Anthropic published a report about Iran using its AI model, Claude, to help target American forces and run propaganda campaigns, while others have discussed AI’s capabilities in hacking and even weapons development. All true.
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What isn’t publicized? That the best way to defeat, or even challenge, these threats is also with AI. And that isn’t to mention AI’s benefits across industries, accelerating drug discovery and diagnostics in medicine, detecting fraud in finance, optimizing crop yields in agriculture, balancing energy grids, and streamlining supply chains in manufacturing.
This comes as Americans are seeking to determine the approach to AI regulation, whether a complete moratorium is necessary, as Bernie Sanders wants, or something else. And the fear is bipartisan: polls show majorities in both parties want stricter AI oversight, even as they disagree on how far to go.
The result is a Congress that agrees something must be done but can’t agree on what, leaving the public to sort through doomsday warnings, industry reassurances, and the quiet reality that AI, for all its risks, is already improving everyone’s lives.
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