AI’s White Collar Wipeout Is All Part of the Hype: 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 Officer Sam Altman used to say the technology behind ChatGPT could threaten human civilization itself: “We face existential risk,” he said in 2023. That flavor of doom mongering has become passé, judging by the new boogeymen Altman and his peers have been pointing to lately: AI as a job killer and a ...