This piece contextualises the recent wave of AI executives—including Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, Satya Nadella and Elon Musk—publicly calling for AI regulation, arguing that such warnings from people who profit from the technology deserve scepticism but are not new. It traces a long lineage of concern about intelligent machines, from 19th-century philosophical warnings to Alan Turing's 1951 lecture predicting machines could eventually "take control", showing that fears about AI have long preceded today's industry leaders.

The article highlights Elon Musk as an early example of a modern tech mogul warning about the very technology he was investing in, having put $38 million into OpenAI while repeatedly calling AI more dangerous than nuclear weapons between 2014 and 2018, and pushing US governors in 2017 to regulate AI proactively. It also notes Mark Zuckerberg's 2018 suggestion, made amid the Cambridge Analytica scandal, that his company might need "the right" regulation, and Microsoft's 2018 alarm over its own facial recognition technology, illustrating a recurring pattern of industry figures flagging risks tied to their own products.