{"slug": "reid-hoffman-dismisses-ai-doomers-look-at-me-i-m-cassandra", "title": "Reid Hoffman dismisses AI doomers: 'Look at me, I'm Cassandra'", "summary": "LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman dismissed AI doomer warnings at Politico's Decoded Summit in Washington on Wednesday, saying most catastrophic scenarios are \"so like remote and controllable\" and comparing the alarm to people declaring \"Look at me, I'm Cassandra.\" Hoffman argued against slowing frontier AI research, citing biosecurity and cybersecurity defense and economic prosperity, and called it a legitimate criticism to ask why Anthropic and OpenAI leaders are now urging a slowdown while leading the field. He instead stressed that frontier labs must properly manage recursive self-improvement, a position that contrasts with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call for labs \"to pace\" development, which Elon Musk and Sam Altman endorsed, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said companies can slow down individually without an industry-wide pact.", "body_md": "[Reid Hoffman](https://www.businessinsider.com/reid-hoffman) isn't here for your take about AI is going to kill everyone.\n\n\"I actually think most of that stuff, if you actually really think about it, is so like remote and controllable that it is mostly where people are kind of like, 'Look at me, I'm Cassandra, I'm saying it's the end of time,\" Hoffman said during Politico's Decoded Summit in Washington on Wednesday.\n\nHoffman said there are benefits to continuing frontier AI research, including how the technology can help address biosecurity and cybersecurity risks.\n\n\"I don't think that slowing down is important, because when you get to the defense against biorisk, the defense against cyber risk, and creating economic prosperity is a reason, I think, to keep going,\" he said.\n\nThe LinkedIn cofounder said it's a legitimate criticism to question why the leaders of Anthropic and OpenAI are now calling for a slowdown in frontier AI research at a moment when both companies appear to be leading the world.\n\n\"You're in the lead, you can slow down anytime you like,\" Hoffman said.\n\nInstead of slowing down, Hoffman stressed that \"it's really important\" that frontier labs properly manage recursive self-improvement.\n\nSome in the AI industry are concerned that recursive self-improvement, the process by which AI can learn to build itself and eventually its successors, could unlock a path to exponential growth that model makers might not be able to fully control.\n\nJacob Coxon, the former Anthropic researcher whose viral [resignation helped catalyze the current conversation](https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-researcher-quits-over-ai-safety-concerns-2026-9), wrote on Tuesday night that Anthropic \"largely initiated\" the race to recursive self-improvement.\n\nOver the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for frontier AI labs \"to pace\" their developments and to use the time to better align AI models. [SpaceX CEO Elon Musk](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk) and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later expressed agreement with Amodei's broad aims.\n\nIn an essay he published on Wednesday, Hoffman said that Amodei and Altman's calls were steps \"in the right direction.\"\n\nNot everyone is pushing for a unified response.\n\n[Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg](https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg) wrote on Tuesday night that companies can slow down individually without some sort of industry-wide pact that Amodei wants.\n\n\"Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely,\" Zuckerberg wrote on X.\n\nZuckerberg said that Meta delayed the release of Muse, its AI agent built by its Superintelligence Labs team, by months to strengthen the model's safety and security.\n\n\"We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would,\" Zuckerberg said. \"We just did it.\"", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/reid-hoffman-dismisses-ai-doomers-look-at-me-i-m-cassandra", "canonical_source": "https://www.businessinsider.com/reid-hoffman-ai-cassandra-doom-risk-steering-rsi-2026-9", "published_at": "2026-09-16 19:36:16+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-16 19:42:50.611180+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-safety", "ai-policy", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Reid Hoffman", "LinkedIn", "Anthropic", "OpenAI", "Dario Amodei", "Elon Musk", "Sam Altman", "Mark Zuckerberg"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/reid-hoffman-dismisses-ai-doomers-look-at-me-i-m-cassandra", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/reid-hoffman-dismisses-ai-doomers-look-at-me-i-m-cassandra.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/reid-hoffman-dismisses-ai-doomers-look-at-me-i-m-cassandra.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/reid-hoffman-dismisses-ai-doomers-look-at-me-i-m-cassandra.jsonld"}}