Reddit co-founder says tech industry has been 'tone deaf' in explaining AI: 'Misinformation flying around'
- ID
- 25084
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 17 Sep 2026, 3:12 PM
- Fetched
- 17 Sep 2026, 3:27 PM
- Provider
- CNBC Technology
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/16/reddit-ai-risk-humanity-warning-tech.html
- Source URL
- https://www.cnbc.com/id/19854910/device/rss/rss.html
Summary
- Score
- 3.5
- Created
- 17 Sep 2026, 3:27 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- ai_ml_learnersai_agent_users
What happened
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian told CNBC the tech industry has done a 'pretty tone deaf job' of explaining AI risks, arguing the public debate should focus on substantive risks rather than Terminator-style scare scenarios or political point-scoring. His comments follow recent warnings from researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic about recursive self-improvement (RSI), where AI systems help develop more capable AI systems.
Why it matters
Little direct action item for builders, but the RSI mention from OpenAI and Anthropic researchers is the concrete signal worth tracking — if RSI becomes a real capability, it changes how AI agent builders think about safety guardrails and deployment velocity. Ohanian's critique is mostly commentary with no specific prescription.
Discussion angle
Where is the line between mundane AI risks (bias, hallucination, data leakage) that builders should own versus existential RSI risks that labs and governments should own — and does poor public communication actually change what we ship?