The resignation letter of Jacob Coxon (a 27-year-old who spent three years training AI models at OpenAI and Anthropic) has received more than 170 million views on social media. He pressed his case a follow-up interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper: He claimed that AI companies, in their race for an edge, are building superintelligent agents and losing control over them, and that unless the trend is reversed, a new generation of agents is likely to take over and kill us all by the end of the decade.
These statements caused widespread alarm – understandably, since nobody really believes our self-interested companies, or our self-interested and clueless governments, will reverse the trend. Despite this – or more accurately, because of it – I find in the prospect a source of relief.
And before you roll your eyes, pause for a minute and consider the consequences of knowing we will all be gone by, say, 2030.
We don’t have to worry about our children’s deep anger at our shortcomings, whether they actually love or hate us, whether they will remain prisoners of their limitations or ultimately transcend them, whether we are actually guilty – responsible for these limitations by our inattention, flaws, and ignorance – or whether it was the genes or bad luck, and whether it was a good idea to have them in the first place.
We don’t have to worry about our partners – whether they are good for us, whether we chose well or merely settled, whether the distance between us is a passing season or the shape of the rest of our lives, or whether we will end up alone, our friendships quietly thinning until there is no one left to notice we are gone.
We don’t have to worry about our failures: our unachievable ambitions, professional mediocrity, fledgling marriages, personal inconsistencies, and our general falling short of the great achievements we envisioned for ourselves.
We don’t have to worry about climate change driving us to live in underground silos.
We don’t have to worry about China, whether it will drag us into a global war or merely bully its neighbors into submission, invade Taiwan and annex it; or whether American populism will topple its democratic system outright or just quietly erode its norms; or whether Russia will ever, ever settle down and leave the rest of us alone.
We don’t have to worry about whether the countries of the Arab World will ever transform into functioning democracies, whether Muslims will reconcile their beliefs with modernity and the world order, and which version of Islam is “True Islam.”
We don’t have to worry about whether Free Palestine means genocide for Israeli Jews or whether opposing it means genocide for the Palestinians, whether sanctions against Israel will end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, or end it itself, or drive everyone into a deeper abyss.
We don’t have to worry about our jobs – whether they will be taken away by globalization, deindustrialization, or AI. Nor do we have to lose any sleep over tariffs or the next market crash.
We don’t have to worry about capitalism, its oft-predicted and never-arriving demise or transformation, whether it is sliding into the genocidal phase the Left has announced, or the Left is sliding into ever more lunatic versions of itself.
We don’t have to worry about whether the progressives’ radical positions will deliver Democrats a decisive victory or crushing defeat.
We don’t have to worry about immigration, whether the newcomers will dissolve into us or we into them, and how to reconcile our ideal of equality and tolerance with communities’ desire to live according to their values.
We don’t have to worry about race, whether the wounds are ever going to heal.
We don’t have to worry about whether abortion is a right or murder, and whether we’re being criminally responsible for taking either side.
We don’t have to worry about higher education, its lost sense of direction and its collapsing public trust. We don’t have to agonize over whether academic neutrality is a genuine commitment to critical thinking or, as the activists insist, a betrayal of it.
We don’t have to worry about aging bodies, medical checkups or insurance, the mortgage, or whether our pension savings will outlive us.
We don’t have to worry about our legacy and how we will be remembered.
We don’t have to worry, in fact, about anything. We can finally do what the self-appointed gurus (inspired by, or appropriating, Oriental philosophies) have been urging on us for years: “Live in the present, let go of the future.” Well, it’s finally happening.
So sit back and enjoy.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MBN’s editorial stance.
