Article By Frank Bergman
Experts are sounding alarms after artificial intelligence giant Anthropic hired a notorious economist who argues that a one-in-three chance of ending human existence is an acceptable tradeoff if AI delivers massive economic growth.
The AI company, known for publicly warning about the dangers of the same technology it is racing to build, recently brought on Stanford economics professor Chad Jones.
Jones’s past work is now drawing scrutiny after the Financial Times highlighted a paper in which he calculated what level of existential risk from AI could be considered “optimal” when weighed against potential gains in living standards.
The conclusion was staggering.
Jones wrote that humanity could face a 1 percent annual chance of extinction over 40 years during an AI explosion.
“Recall that we would face a flow probability of existential risk of 1 percent per year for 40 years, so the probability we survive this AI explosion is exp (−.01 × 40) ≈ 0.67,” Jones wrote.
“In other words, with log utility it is optimal to take a 1 in 3 chance of ending human existence in exchange for a 2/3 chance of dramatically raising living standards by a factor of 55,” he added.
Economist Framed Extinction Risk as Economic Tradeoff
Jones’s argument effectively treated the survival of the human race as a cost-benefit calculation.
Under his model, a 33 percent chance of human extinction could be justified if the alternative is a major economic boom produced by artificial intelligence.
The argument has alarmed critics who say humanity should not be treated like a speculative investment.
“This isn’t poker where you let the math guide you because even if you lose now on a net positive decision, it works out in the long run,” one Reddit user wrote.
“Ending human existence requires a tad more discretion.”
The backlash underscores the growing unease surrounding the AI industry’s elite class.
Many of the same companies and thinkers warning that AI could destroy humanity are also pushing to expand the technology as quickly as possible.
Anthropic has built much of its public identity around AI safety.
The company frequently presents itself as the responsible alternative to other major artificial intelligence firms.
However, the hiring of Jones raises new questions about what “safety” means inside an industry where some influential figures openly discuss human extinction as a manageable economic risk.
Anthropic Builds Brand on AI Doomsday Warnings
Anthropic has long leaned into warnings about AI’s possible catastrophic consequences.
That approach allows the company to claim the moral high ground while competing in the same high-stakes AI race as OpenAI, Google, Meta, and other tech giants.
The strategy also has a convenient side effect.
By warning that AI could end the world, companies like Anthropic reinforce the idea that their products are extraordinarily powerful and historically important.
Every doomsday warning doubles as a marketing claim.
If AI is dangerous enough to threaten civilization, then the companies building it can portray themselves as guardians of humanity rather than ordinary corporations chasing market dominance.
That narrative benefits the same firms asking governments, investors, and the public to trust them with increasingly powerful systems.
Anthropic insists that it takes safety seriously.
But critics have pointed to contradictions, including reports that the company’s Claude AI was used to help select strike targets in Iran despite Anthropic’s public dispute with the Pentagon over safe deployment of its technology.
Those tensions make Jones’s past arguments even more explosive.
AI Industry Asks Public to Trust Its Judgment
Jones’s paper does not prove Anthropic endorses a one-in-three extinction gamble.
But it does offer a revealing glimpse into the kind of thinking circulating inside the upper tiers of the AI world.
The industry’s most powerful players are not merely building tools for productivity.
They are shaping systems they themselves describe as potentially civilization-altering.
At the same time, some of their experts are treating mass human risk as a variable in an economic model.
That should disturb ordinary people who never voted to become test subjects in Silicon Valley’s grand experiment.
Americans are already being told that AI will transform work, media, education, medicine, warfare, and surveillance.
Now they are also being told by elite technocrats that even existential danger may be worth it if the economic upside is large enough.
Anthropic’s brand depends on the claim that it is a serious, safety-focused AI company.
But hiring an economist whose work entertains a 33 percent extinction risk as “optimal” will only deepen concerns that the people steering the AI revolution may be far too comfortable gambling with everyone else’s future.
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