Source: spiked
by Frank Furedi
“I have studied scaremongering and the culture of fear for almost three decades. It’s clear to me that the current AI doomsday narrative recycles several older panics simultaneously. Just as with the invention of the nuclear bomb, humanity feared an invention it could not control. When computers and the internet were created, we feared technological displacement. And there is the older philosophical fear that humanity’s own intelligence could be the source of its undoing. Each time, a rational assessment of the potential risks is shoved aside in favour of a narrative of an impending apocalypse. Yet when it comes to AI, I have found the evolution of this carefully staged exercise in scaremongering different in some respects.” (09/15/26)