Artificial intelligence is being sold with a sense of urgency, and now with a sense of fear. In the source piece, Michael Serazio argues that warnings about AI 'could kill us all' are part of the marketing machine behind a technology that investors are still treating as a giant wager.
The piece points to recent alarm from Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who said on X that 'The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.' Serazio’s central point is that the risks can be real and the pitch can still be commercial at the same time.
That matters because the economics are enormous. The source says AI is 'an unfathomably expensive technology' with an 'as-yet' speculative business model, while it is also 'propping up the U.S. economy' and 'torch[ing] tech company cash by the bushel.' It says OpenAI and Anthropic are both eyeing trillion-dollar I.P.O.s, which gives the fear campaign an unmistakable business backdrop.
Serazio argues that for AI to win broad adoption, people must be persuaded to bring it into 'every aspect of our thinking lives, both professionally and personally.' He says the marketing is already doing that work, with commercials asking consumers to let AI organize book clubs, write children’s fan letters, and handle eulogies.
The piece also says the ads lean on themes of 'entrepreneurial empowerment' and 'efficiency fetish,' while another common message is inevitability. OpenAI’s Super Bowl ad, as described in the source, placed AI in the lineage of the spear, fire, railroad, flight, DNA, and space travel. Serazio says that framing makes AI look like the next unavoidable step in human progress.
That is the real business lesson here. Power leaves a paper trail, and in AI’s case the trail runs through fear, hype, and capital. If a technology can be sold as both apocalyptic and indispensable, the market gets a much easier pitch than a sober debate over cost, limits, and accountability.
For investors and executives, the upside is obvious: bigger adoption, larger valuations, and more tolerance for losses while the buildout continues. For the taxpayer and the broader economy, the question is whether the same hype cycle that attracts capital also crowds out discipline. Capital rewards clear rules, but it also rewards grand narratives. AI is now trying to cash in on both.
