The AI hysteria has reached a fever pitch now that even major AI developers are warning of the end of humanity. But the risks that people have been warning about for years have long been a daily reality for many people.

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AI developers are sounding the alarm because they themselves are now at risk

The alarm bells are ringing again: AI will kill us all. That was the warning issued recently by AI researcher Jacob Coxon who left Anthropic, the U.S. AI research company founded by former OpenAI employees. He warns that neither Anthropic nor OpenAI is acting responsibly. Dario Amodei, the founder of Anthropic and developer of Claude, also sounded the alarm himself, warning that development is moving too fast and there is a risk that AI will become uncontrollable and act on its own. This happened this summer as well, when OpenAI hacked Hugging Face entirely on its own. Amodei’s call for caution has been echoed by Elon Musk (Grok) and Sam Altman (ChatGPT).

Now that the big AI bosses are sounding the alarm, the hysteria is in full swing. People seem to be wondering if it might not be so dystopian after all for us all to be wiped out by AI. It’s striking that the concerns seem to center mainly on the word “all.” Because AI is already killing people. In Gaza, Palestinians are being killed by Israeli autonomous weapons. And the United States has bombed thousands of targets in Iran guided by AI from Palantir and Claude.

Judging by the statements made by top AI executives, the problem doesn’t seem to be the monster that has been created, but rather the possibility that the monster might turn against its creator. It’s almost like a modern retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Scared yet?

That monster now appears to have an insatiable appetite for energy and an unquenchable thirst for our planet’s scarce drinking water. Data centers continue to be built, including in the Netherlands — such as in Amsterdam-Zuidoost — even as the Dutch government instructed us this summer to limit our showers to no more than five minutes due to the water shortage.

Meanwhile, a generation of students is growing up that doesn’t understand that the final product of a degree program isn’t the thesis, but rather the way you gather and process information—a skill that more and more people are outsourcing to AI, to the point where they are no longer able to think critically themselves.

Bits of Freedom has been warning for years about the risks of AI and the importance of effective, future-proof legislation. But the AI regulation currently on the table was developed primarily with the idea that Europe must join the AI race in which China and the United States are engaged — a race that American developers now say must be slowed down because it is becoming too risky and requires legislation. Chinese President Xi and U.S. President Trump dismiss this as scaremongering.

ChatGPT: How can we protect ourselves from AI?

The implementation of the AI Regulation in the EU is also still a ways off, as it has been postponed. This is partly due to—oh, the irony—the U.S. tech lobby. The law, which was supposed to take full effect this summer, will now not be fully in force until August 2028. The purpose of this law is to ensure that AI is developed and used in a responsible and safe manner. But to make matters worse, the AI Regulation does not apply to military use, despite the many warnings. Dangers that are now becoming a reality in war zones where AI is being used to take human lives on a massive scale.

So right now, we’re mainly relying on AI developers who are putting the brakes on themselves because they recognize the risks to themselves. Perhaps this is the moment when Dutch and European lawmakers will start scratching their heads. But it’s more likely that they’ll ask ChatGPT what they should do next.