Wired interviewed AI researcher Timnit Gebru, a prominent critic of the artificial intelligence industry, about the current wave of debate over AI "doom" scenarios and existential risk. Gebru, best known for her 2020 departure from Google after raising concerns about the dangers of large language models, argues that apocalyptic warnings from AI labs distract the public from more immediate, tangible harms caused by the technology, and she rejects the framing implied by terms like "safety and alignment".

In the interview, Gebru criticises AI firms such as OpenAI for hyping breakthroughs in narrow domains like mathematics, chess and programming as evidence of "solved" intelligence, arguing this lets companies control the narrative ahead of press coverage and regulation rather than allowing proper expert scrutiny, citing the Leiden Declaration on the responsible use of mathematics by corporations. She also addresses the resignation of an Anthropic engineer who accused AI companies of recklessness, using the analogy of a collapsing bridge to argue that the focus should be on the people and companies building flawed systems rather than on speculative fears of AI "going rogue", tracing her position back to her 2021 "stochastic parrots" paper.