@willchamberlain: This week, Jacob Coxon’s Anthropic resignation thread went mega-viral on X to a degree that made many, including Elon M…

This week, Jacob Coxon’s Anthropic resignation thread went mega-viral on X to a degree that made many, including Elon Musk, suspicious. What many might not realize is that Coxon’s viral thread has revealed the existence of an entire ecosystem of AI doomers: intellectuals and donors who believe a super-intelligent AI will become a malevolent god and wipe us out. They used to play coy about their beliefs, while funding opposition to AI on narrower grounds: opposing prurient deepfakes and highlighting the alleged harms of data centers. Now they are saying what they really think out loud. In this episode of Counterweight, Brian Chau (@brianchau57) walks us through who the AI Doomers are, what they think, why they think it, and how they are wrong. We also look at how the AI doomer nonprofit complex bought a media ecosystem—including a Guardian story where the publisher, the reporter, the subject, and the experts were all paid by the same donors—and how Sam Bankman-Fried’s regulatory-monopoly playbook is being reopened by Anthropic. 0:00 The AI Doomers— they think it causes the apocalypse, and nobody believed him 0:48 Host intro 2:20 From AI engineer to Alliance for the Future 5:37 Coxon goes viral — now we can fight the apocalypse lobby on honest ground 8:52 The doomer thesis — AI becomes God, and that God wants us dead 10:53 Why the doomer logic chain is wrong — S-curves, narrow models, and the cult’s dark triad 19:02 Bankman-Fried, Moskovitz, Tallinn — who funds the doom machine 21:43 Guardian stack — publisher, reporter, subject, and experts all paid by the same donors 26:05 SBF’s regulatory monopoly playbook — and Anthropic’s “safe” option 27:48 Coxon’s mega-viral thread as the nonprofit product coming online 31:21 Data centers — Singham money and a doom ecosystem five to ten times larger 38:00 Kill switches on American GPUs — sold as China policy, built to press immediately 42:26 TIME’s AI 100 — Jensen Huang left off 44:18 Ask Hinton if he’s a socialist — “I don’t believe in private ownership of compute” 46:24 YouTube ads bid up to control what you see about AI doom 48:14 Undisclosed sponsorships paying creators to push the apocalypse