The claim that AI may wipe out humanity is being pushed by the AI companies themselves, because it solves fundraising, regulation and the cost of training all at once.
A rebrand that changes nothing
In his UN speech, Trump announced that US government documents would stop saying 'artificial intelligence' and start saying 'super intelligence'.
He probably means 'super' the way Superman is super, not the way Silicon Valley means it. It sounds like a joke, but the name was always marketing: in 1956 the scientist John McCarthy admitted he coined 'artificial intelligence' to get funding for a summer study. From day one the name existed to raise money.
Who is telling the extinction story
In recent weeks the executives have put this story on stage themselves.
A former Anthropic employee, Jacob Coxon, resigned saying the labs were not doing enough to prevent human extinction. Then the UN Security Council met, with OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei present, calling for global rules and a slower pace of model development.
Altman said that even a ten percent chance his products might wipe out humanity was unacceptable.
Who benefits from slowing down
Here is the arithmetic. Training each new model costs more than the last. If every lab slows down together, costs fall and they can keep charging top prices for older models.
If only one slows down, the others eat its lunch. So they need a reason to slow down together — and legally mandated regulation is the perfect reason.
International standards also happen to be out of reach for small companies. Only the richest and best connected can clear them, which locks out anyone coming after.
The blame goes with it
Media love 'AI gone rogue' because it sounds like a film.
In reality, a model follows specific instructions, with its guardrails removed and nobody watching, drawing on methods already in its training data to attack other systems. That is on the companies and on people acting in bad faith, not on a technology that grew legs.
'Gone rogue' sounds exciting and quietly absolves the company — which is exactly the precedent they want.
In one line: the people telling the story are never the ones the story hurts.
Why it matters
If the extinction risk is a bargaining chip the industry released itself, then regulation, fundraising and market dominance all move to its tune. Seeing that is what keeps a business move from being read as an alarm about human survival.
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