There is no doubt that AI is transforming different spheres of life and society, influencing every sector of the economy, politics, culture, individual life, infrastructure, and industrial growth. AI-led ICT is shaping governance, policy, and decision-making debates unlike any other period in history. Yet the AI race has not produced the efficiency it promised; it has not accelerated productivity as claimed; it has not generated the profits it claimed it would. Investors are not making money.
For example, Nvidia Corporation's price-to-earnings ratio is below the US market average. Despite its phenomenal growth, Nvidia is not making the profit it claimed it would. The combined global revenue of all AI companies had reached $229 billion by August 2026. AI companies are borrowing heavily to invest; the AI debt market now stands at a staggering $445 billion and is expected to grow to $600 billion by the end of 2026. Despite dubious methods of calculating revenue and considerable tax benefits, AI companies are not showing the economic output needed to inspire confidence. The profit-to-debt ratio also reveals a troubling imbalance on the balance sheets of AI companies, with substantial operational losses. It is also predicted that AI will disrupt $4.7 trillion in profits for global businesses by 2035.
Instead of pursuing robust economic planning and trustworthy, secure, and sustainable technological innovation, the leading AI companies and their executives have turned to scaremongering as a strategic tool—one that allows them to evade responsibility while weaponising AI for profit, securing shareholder value at the expense of people and the planet.
From Anthropic's Dario Amodei to Jacob Coxon, and from OpenAI's Sam Altman to Elon Musk of xAI, these leaders are unanimous in claiming to be frightened by the growth and capabilities of AI, which they say could threaten human life. In an interview with the BBC, AI researcher Jacob Coxon stated that "if we don't slow down at the current rate of progress, there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future." AI companies and their leaders then use this fear to call on states and governments to regulate AI.
The call for regulation sounds reasonable, but the danger hidden behind it is the scaremongering strategy—amplified by claims such as that of Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger, who has argued that AI could pose a catastrophic risk to humanity within the next decade. Such scaremongering exploits human fear, appealing to the basic instinct of survival in the face of a speculative and unproven threat to human life from AI. Knives have no ability or intent to kill; it is the misuse of them, and the intent of their users, that kills. Likewise, no body of scientific or technological knowledge kills people on its own—it is the owners of that technology who develop and deploy it in ways that cause harm.
In the same way, AI is neither designed nor intended to kill people. AI has no inherent ability to kill unless it is deliberately programmed to do so. AI is meant to help people, raise labour productivity, and empower individuals. But the stated noble intentions behind AI have not delivered the profits that AI companies expected. As a result, this coordinated corporate campaign by AI leaders reads less like a warning and more like a confession made in advance of a crime.
Fearmongering as a strategy has long been used by ruling classes, religious leaders, and their affiliated ideologies to control human life, labour, and love. This fearmongering strategy among AI leaders has three components. First, it is designed not merely because fear sells, but to dramatize the inevitability of AI products and services in everyday life. Second, it is designed to shape investor expectations about the profit potential of AI companies. Third, it is designed to create the conditions needed to expand cybersecurity infrastructure and further weaponise AI in the name of security—infrastructure that can ultimately endanger people and the planet. This third strategy is intended to accelerate AI's already exuberant profit regime.
The fearmongering campaign unleashed by AI companies and their leaders, then, is not really about protecting people and the planet from unpredictable or uncontrollable AI systems. It is about creating the conditions for unlimited profit in the name of security. This strategy is designed to deepen the security state and its infrastructure, further eroding existing citizenship rights. A Foucauldian panopticon would be normalised at scale, disciplining people in every sphere of life according to the needs and desires of capital in collaboration with AI companies. There is nothing humane about a compliance strategy built on the cognitive trap of existential fear. This existential-risk narrative enables, accelerates, and entrenches the conditions that consolidate and expand the weaponisation of AI for profit.
It is not AI itself but AI-led Autonomous Weapons Systems (AWS)—designed, manufactured, and marketed by AI companies in collaboration with the military-industrial complex—that can kill and threaten everyday life, subjugate people, and stabilise the profit-making pyramid of AI-led capitalism without resistance. AI-led AWS is designed to dehumanise people and dismantle social life, producing a human existence wholly dependent on technology. What these giant AI companies and their leaders are ultimately building, through fearmongering, is a form of technological servitude under techno-feudalism.
In this context, a Luddite response is not the answer. The answer lies in regulation that allows people to innovate, use, and control AI in ways that humanise, democratise, decolonise, and decarbonise knowledge, skills, technology, and human life for the greater common good—where collective peace and collective prosperity can prevail. The world needs AI that empowers people and creates the conditions for a sustainable planet, free of inequality and exploitation.
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*Academic based in UK
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