Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner took aim at the growing alarm from AI researchers, saying this week’s rhetoric about technology’s ability to cause human extinction is divorced from reality.
“What I didn’t like this week was these big scare tactics that I think are hidden behind political agendas,” Gerstner said Friday on CNBC’s “Halftime Report.” “And we ignored all the extraordinary steps that have already been taken to get ahead of these downsides, unlike the internet age and social media.”
Gerstner’s firm invests in both areas. human and main competitors OpenAIother notable artificial intelligence companies such as enterprise search startup Glean and software and data analytics vendor Databricks.
His comments come after a researcher quit his job at Anthropic earlier this week and accused AI companies of “risking their lives” in the race to superintelligence in a post on X.
“In my 25 years in Silicon Valley, I don’t think I’ve ever safely invested so much time and energy into a new technology,” Gerstner said. “If you listened to the echo chamber stories this week, you’d think we were hurtling along at breakneck speed with no regard for safety, but that’s just not true.”
