This BBC article made me smile a little — apparently the cynicism of AI companies came as a surprise to someone.
OpenAI, Anthropic, they all want you afraid of them. And you know what? It works.
Why it works
It works, first of all, because fear sells. Mystery creates power. And framing something as “too complex to be understood” is a reliable way to make people stop questioning it.
As a self-respecting Malvagio, I have a soft spot for these carefully engineered psychological tricks designed to manufacture submission in the masses.
The uncomfortable truth
The fact remains: AI is not conscious, it is not omniscient, and if we’re being honest, it is not even out of control.
It is positioned in the public mind to be just opaque enough to look like magic, and just useful enough that you can’t imagine living without it.
And with that strategy, AI companies are creating the conditions to corner not just markets, but political systems too.
The political game
When a company says “this technology is too dangerous to release,” what it’s actually telling governments is: “let us write the regulations, let us keep moving, and in doing so we’ll block the road for competitors from other countries — who will obviously be less responsible and far more dangerous to our democracy.”
See the trick? They’re telling nation-states to abandon democratic principles in order to be first to something perceived as so disruptive, so mysterious, that it’s apparently worth putting democracy itself up for debate.
Do you see the contradiction — and the danger that comes with it?
Who’s already redrawing the board
And while governments and the rest of us argue about whether this thing will destroy the world, the relevant players are already redrawing the labour market, redistributing power, and deciding who controls what.
No conspiracy theories required. No science fiction. Just the cold logic of business.
What I’m actually afraid of
I’m not afraid of AI. I’m afraid of the people who use fear to control the narrative.