Andrew Bosworth: he assigns AI catastrophe some probability but does not see the case

‘I'm sending it to my parents. I'm not at all worried about the paperclip maximizing problem’

EXCERPT

BOSWORTH: "Yeah, and I think, I guess since we're kind of very close to this topic, I would be curious to hear your thoughts, if you wanna share, on the massive post that went viral a couple weeks ago, Jacob Coxon's, you know, statement about the a- end of the world and AI causing extinction. Yeah, I mean, I think if you go back to any technology, there's just people who are very alarmed by the change that it portends, uh, for the world. In fact, there's one of my favorite h- Twitter accounts is The Pessimist's Archive- Ooh, fun ... which goes back and finds, you know, uh, New York Times articles thinking that n- novels are going to ruin society, and then bicycles are going to ruin society, and there, it's just nearly- This is great ... nearly every technology is met with some chorus of people who genuinely believe that this is too big of a change for society to handle- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... or this thing is a different kind of thing than anything that has come before. Yes. And I mean, obviously it's possible, um, so I can't, you know, give these people zero probability. I don't see it. I work in the technology. I'm a sufficiently expert at the technology. I use it every day. Um, I understand how it works at a pretty deep fundamental level. I feel very confident in it. You know, I'm sending it to my parents. I'm not at all worried about, uh, the paperclip maximizing problem- Yeah, right ... overtaking them- Totally, yeah ... in their life. So I'm not-- Again, it's one of those things where I find myself in the middle, like, yeah, we-- This is a big deal, and we should take it seriously in the same way we took-- need to take the internet seriously and computing seriously. Um, it's a hugely, hugely important thing. Yeah. And also, it is a, the kind of thing that we can absolutely navigate as a society, I believe."

Source: Harper Carroll AI · Sep 23, 2026 · 90s clip