Fear or Something else, an infographic by Dilip Pungliya, for Wisdomia

I'm always thrilled to connect with like-minded folks, and whenever I get the opportunity, I love catching up with my buddy Dinis to exchange ideas or going for a walk with my friend Sathya to bounce thoughts around. Recently, I decided to take my curiosity a step further and asked AI some of my burning questions. The conversation was incredibly fascinating, and I can't wait to share it with all of you!

AI is everywhere in boardrooms, markets, governments, defence strategy and everyday conversation.

We are being told it could transform productivity, replace jobs, hack systems, reshape global power and, in the most extreme warnings, even threaten humanity.

But there is another side to the story that deserves asking:

How much of this is real technological risk and how much is narrative, capital, competition and fear?

With AI companies reaching extraordinary valuations, requiring enormous investment and becoming part of the strategic rivalry between the US and China, the conversation is no longer only about technology.

It is also about money, power, control and belief.

So I decided to ask AI itself some uncomfortable questions.

And some of the answers were more interesting than I expected.

Everyone is talking about AI.

AI can now hack systems.

AI will take our jobs.

AI may become more intelligent than humans.

AI could even threaten humanity.

But I have a different question:

Are we discussing AI objectively, or are fear, money, geopolitics and corporate interests becoming mixed into the same narrative?

So I decided to challenge AI itself.

Not because I believe one conspiracy is behind everything. But because when hundreds of billions of dollars, national security and some of the world's most valuable companies are involved, asking uncomfortable questions is healthy.

Me: Is all this talk about AI hacking systems real or partly hype?

AI:

The capability is real.

AI systems can increasingly perform reconnaissance, identify vulnerabilities, develop exploits, and automate parts of cyberattacks.

Anthropic recently documented malicious AI use across the cyberattack lifecycle, while its latest research suggests advanced cyber capabilities are spreading beyond American frontier models to Chinese systems as well.

But there is an important distinction.

AI being capable of executing a cyberattack is not the same as AI independently deciding to attack humanity.

Humans are still generally choosing the targets and objectives.

My question to you:

Are we warning society appropriately about a real threat, or turning capability into fear?

Me: Is AI really going to take everyone's job?

AI:

Probably not everyone's job.

But it could profoundly change who gets hired, how many people companies need and what skills remain valuable.

The International Labour Organisation says roughly one in four workers globally is employed in an occupation with some exposure to generative AI. Still, its research suggests job transformation is currently much more likely than wholesale elimination.

Its June 2026 review found genuine productivity improvements, but large-scale employment displacement remains limited so far.

That doesn't mean there is no problem.

If ten people can eventually do the work previously requiring twenty, we don't need "zero jobs" to experience serious economic disruption.

The real question may therefore be:

Will AI eliminate work or allow businesses to employ fewer people to produce much more?

Those are very different futures.

Me: Then why are AI companies themselves talking so much about how powerful AI will become?

AI:

Because two things can be true at the same time: technology can genuinely be extraordinary. And companies selling that technology have a financial incentive for the world to believe it will become extraordinarily important.

That deserves scrutiny.

OpenAI, for example, is reportedly seeking at least $30 billion in new private funding at a valuation around $1.4 trillion, after pushing back its IPO plans.

AI companies need extraordinary amounts of capital for chips, data centres, electricity, researchers and computing infrastructure.

Therefore, the narrative:

"AI will transform everything"

also helps justify:

"We must invest unprecedented amounts of money today."

That doesn't make the technology fake.

But companies building AI should not be treated as completely neutral commentators on AI's economic importance.

And this leads to my biggest doubt.

Suppose a company tells us:

AI may become more powerful than almost anything humanity has created.

An investor might hear:

Then this could become one of the most valuable companies in history.

Fear and investment excitement can therefore reinforce each other.

"AI is dangerous" can unintentionally become another way of saying "AI is extraordinarily powerful."

And extraordinary power attracts extraordinary valuations.

Me: Could all this eventually help an AI company when it goes public?

AI:

Potentially, yes.

But that doesn't establish that the narrative was deliberately created for an IPO.

Public markets naturally provide liquidity to founders, employees and early investors.

That isn't unusual.

The important question for future investors isn't simply:

"Will AI change the world?"

It is:

"How much of that future is already included in today's valuation?"

This distinction matters enormously.

A company can change the world and still be a terrible investment if investors pay too much for it.

We have seen that throughout financial history.

Then there is China.

Another question I have:

Is some of the AI fear narrative also geopolitical?

The answer seems to be partly yes.

The United States clearly considers frontier AI and advanced semiconductors strategic technologies.

US export controls continue to regulate China's access to advanced AI chips on national-security grounds. In January 2026, the US government changed rules around exports of chips such as Nvidia's H200 and AMD's MI325X, allowing some sales subject to security conditions and licensing.

So AI is no longer simply:

Technology competition.

It is increasingly:

Economic competition + military capability + semiconductor control + data + national power.

But there is another important fact.

Chinese AI development is continuing.

Recent research from Anthropic concluded that Zhipu AI's GLM-5.3 has developed advanced autonomous cyber capabilities comparable, in important areas, to leading Western systems.

So stopping another major country from researching AI altogether is probably unrealistic.

The competition is increasingly about who controls compute, chips, infrastructure, talent and the most capable models.

So where does that leave us?

Perhaps the AI debate shouldn't be reduced to two camps:

Camp 1

"AI will save humanity."

versus

Camp 2

"AI will destroy humanity."

Reality may be far more complicated.

AI can be:

A genuine technological breakthrough.

A genuine cybersecurity risk.

A major productivity revolution.

A threat to some jobs and an amplifier of others.

A geopolitical weapon.

An extraordinary business opportunity.

And potentially an investment bubble in certain parts of the market.

All at the same time.

The question I keep coming back to

Maybe the biggest danger isn't simply:

AI vs Humans.

Maybe it is:

Human Ambition
Corporate Concentration
Enormous Capital
Financial Leverage
Geopolitical Rivalry.

Technology doesn't operate independently from the people, companies and governments controlling it.

And perhaps that deserves as much attention as the machines' intelligence.

I remain excited about AI but not fully convinced by every narrative around it.

The technology is real. The opportunity is real. The risks are real.

But so are the incentives.

When trillion-dollar valuations, geopolitical rivalry, national security, infrastructure spending and investor expectations all converge around one technology, it becomes difficult to separate what AI can actually do from what the world wants us to believe it will do next.

That is where my doubt remains.

Are we witnessing the beginning of the most important technological transformation of our generation?

Or are we also witnessing one of the most powerful narratives ever created around capital, fear and strategic control?

Perhaps both are true at the same time.

And that, for me, is what makes AI so fascinating and why I believe we should stay curious, optimistic, but also deeply questioning.

The future of AI may not only depend on how intelligent the machines become. It may depend even more on how intelligently we, as humans, question the story being built around them.

I'd like to hear different views.

Is today's AI fear proportional to the actual technological risk?
Will AI destroy jobs or mainly change the economics of employment?
Does talking about catastrophic AI risk unintentionally increase the perceived value of AI companies?
Does future economics justify today's trillion-dollar AI valuations, or are we pricing decades of expectations today?
And how much of the AI race is really technological innovation versus US–China strategic competition?

I don't claim to know all the answers.

But with this much money, power and geopolitical influence moving around one technology, perhaps questioning the narrative is just as important as believing in the technology.

What do you think?