Opinion

DAN GAINOR: The AI apocalypse is the media's latest scare campaign. Don't buy it

From global cooling scares to Greta Thunberg's 'How dare you,' media fear cycles follow a familiar playbook

By Dan Gainor Fox News

Published October 1, 2026 7:00am EDT

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The legacy media have decided we are facing mankind’s doom. The phrase "AI apocalypse" crops up on numerous news sites, from Reuters to The Economist. Other outlets have gone with "AI doomsday" or other formulations that look like they come from Revelation.

Journalists aren’t entirely to blame, either. The problem is being spammed into our culture by a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) industry experts, conspiracy theorists, and Chinese-sponsored social media. Turn to CNN, and it asks, "Will AI really kill everyone? How, exactly?" Meanwhile, Axios writes, "Here's how AI could kill us all (if the worst fears come true)." Scared? That’s the goal.

Here’s a sentence from CNN that sums up pretty much every warning you can read anywhere: "‘It really is about literally everyone on the planet dying, like the last human drawing the last breath,’ said Nate Soares, the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and the coauthor of ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.’"

AI EXTINCTION WARNINGS DOMINATE HEADLINES AFTER EX-ANTHROPIC EMPLOYEE'S VIRAL POST

Subtle.

But it’s also very familiar. It reads like every apocalyptic warning we’ve had in........

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