A running tally of the most ridiculous things AI bigwigs have said so far
Jensen Huang
“It’s kind of like, in order to save you, they’ve got to hurt you first — that’s the nature of surgery. They’ve got to cut you open to save you. They’ve got to inflict an enormous amount of pain and suffering on you so that they can save you. And so I think AI’s kind of like that.
“Over the next several years we have to unfortunately use fossil fuels, because we just don’t have enough sustainable energy to make a difference. And then after that, hopefully, we can transition to that.” — 9/23/2026, via The New York Times
Evan Hubinger
“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.” — 9/8/2026, via X, the Everything App
Buzzword alert: Recursive self-improvement
What the heck does that mean? AI systems being advanced enough to develop new, improved iterations of the technology alongside or in place of humans.
When did they really start using it? June 2026
The catalyst: As AI companies begin to distance themselves from the previous goal post of achieving “artificial general intelligence,” this has become the new promised land. Anthropic’s post “When AI builds itself” kicked it into high gear:
“For most of AI’s history, humans drove every step in its development cycle. But at Anthropic, we are delegating a growing share of AI development to AI systems themselves, which is speeding up our work.
“Taken far enough, and given enough compute, that trend points to an AI system capable of fully autonomously designing and developing its own successor. This is called recursive self-improvement. We are not there yet, and recursive self-improvement is not inevitable. But it could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for.”
Buzzword alert: Recursive self-improvement
What the heck does that mean? AI systems being advanced enough to develop new, improved iterations of the technology alongside or in place of humans.
When did they really start using it? June 2026
The catalyst: As AI companies begin to distance themselves from the previous goal post of achieving “artificial general intelligence,” this has become the new promised land. Anthropic’s post “When AI builds itself” kicked it into high gear:
“For most of AI’s history, humans drove every step in its development cycle. But at Anthropic, we are delegating a growing share of AI development to AI systems themselves, which is speeding up our work.
“Taken far enough, and given enough compute, that trend points to an AI system capable of fully autonomously designing and developing its own successor. This is called recursive self-improvement. We are not there yet, and recursive self-improvement is not inevitable. But it could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for.”
Buzzword alert: “Pace the Frontier”
What the heck does that mean? Slowing the rate of AI advancement, because it’s supposedly progressing at a dangerous rate.
When did they really start using it? July 2026
The catalyst: A statement from 1,386 employees of frontier AI companies titled Pacing the Frontier:
“We request that the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.”
