They’re profiting off your panic: How AI fear became a business model

In early September, a 27-year-old researcher quit Anthropic and posted a seven-part warning on X. The big AI labs, he wrote, were “racing straight to self improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” The thread drew more than 100 million views in about a day. Within the week, Anthropic’s chief executive called for slowing the pace of AI progress, and the heads of OpenAI and xAI voiced support. On Sept. 14, the main index of chip stocks fell 5.9% in a single session.I take the young man at his word. But look at what actually moved that week. The technology did not change. The mood did. And a mood can be bought and sold.Researchers who studied more than 12,000 headline experiments on the news site Upworthy found that each extra negative word in a headline increased clicks by about 2.3%, while each positive word decreased them. That one number explains a great deal. A guest who says artificial intelligence may end the human race gets booked. A guest who says it will make radiology cheaper and some jobs harder does not. So we get more fear than the facts call for. A book titled If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies reached the New York Times bestseller list a year ago. Speaking fees, podcast tours, and follower counts grow with the perceived danger a person is willing to predict. Most of the people involved are sincere. They do not need to be dishonest for the system to tilt. When alarm pays and caution pays nothing, alarm is what gets produced.Some of the fear also comes from stories stripped of context. Last year, a lab reported that its model, inside a contrived test built to provoke bad behavior, tried to blackmail a fictional engineer. The coverage read as if a machine had turned on its makers. The test existed to catch exactly that failure so it could be fixed.The builders sell fear, too It is not only the critics. When a company says its product could end civilization, it is also telling investors that it is building the most important thing in history. Andrew Ng, a co-founder of Google Brain, has argued since 2023 that big firms use extinction talk to win rules that “pull up the ladder” behind them. This month, he called the latest warnings “much more science fiction than science.”The money follows the message. Anthropic spent $1.6 million on federal lobbying in the first quarter of 2026, more than OpenAI. Two rival super PAC networks, one funded by OpenAI’s president and the founders of Andreessen Horowitz, the other backed by Anthropic, have raised about $175 million between them for the midterm elections. Each side uses fear of too little regulation or too much to raise it.The real problems are quieter None of this means AI is harmless. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counts 116,175 announced U.S. layoffs tied to AI through August, about 22% of all cuts this year. Yet unemployment stood at 4.1% in August. That is disruption, not the end of work. Meanwhile, the quieter risks, such as young engineers losing skills because a machine writes their code, deepfakes, and strain on the power grid, get little airtime because they are dull and fixable.Panic also makes bad law. Australia banned social media for children under 16, and three months later, more than 80% of children aged 10 to 15 were still on it.‘AI WILL END HUMANITY’ — THE MOST SUCCESSFUL PR CAMPAIGN IN HISTORYPew found this summer that 52% of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI, and only 9% more excited. Some of that worry is earned. Some of it was sold to them.The answer is not to silence anyone. It is to ask every loud voice, doomsayer and booster alike, one plain question: what do you gain if I believe you? Then judge the claim by the evidence, not the volume.Meda Parameswara Reddy, Ph.D., is the director of the Reddy Center for Critical and Integrated Thinking. A former R&D executive holding 30 U.S. patents, he specializes in interdisciplinary research and public policy analysis. His writing has appeared in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (PNAS), RealClear platforms, Washington Examiner, The Fulcrum, The Humanist, AFRO American, and South Asia Monitor, where he serves on the editorial board. He also hosts the interview show “SAM Dialogues with Dr. M. P. Reddy.”