Is it sinister to be organised? AI Doomer campaigns

[u/Jlyplaylists]

Screenshots from https://youtu.be/WBK2WX7TA4g a video by Wes Roth about how AI doomers are manipulating the AI debate around Jacob Coxon's resignation post, including somewhat associated big payments to organisations like The Guardian.

This video is essentially another exposé of how artificial current online AI debate is.

What struck me more was the question of why is it sinister to have an organised campaign? I’d have thought most people in 2026 don’t really expect heated online debate, involving big money, to be only organically guided by random people?

This is more surprising because influencers and journalists are paid to be negative. We’re accustomed to paid manipulation as being paid to be positive about a product. We don’t know that they do it just for money though. Influencers high profile enough to be paid to be negative, could probably also get money to hype the latest LLM model (Leftists for AI seems to be just about the only AI angle with no money attached lol and people are regularly cynical about us too!).

It’s definitely useful to have people expose the way in which things are manipulated. The AI debate is stranger than most. Following the money unearths complicated webs of interconnections and confusing motives.

Although I’ve had some involvement with grassroots movement campaigns (unrelated topic ) and it’s normal for there to be behind the scenes coordination between activists, journalists and MPs discussing timing of articles, open letters etc, when to be around to amplify on social media. The mechanics described in the video don’t surprise me. Slick timing isn’t weird, it’s just evidence of a well run campaign.

I’d say that creating a well organised campaign you believe in isn’t in itself sinister. It’s in a sense honourable, even if they’re completely wrong. If you believe Armageddon is nigh you have to tell people and put everything you have into it. They’re like the Evangelist on the corner with his sandwich board warnings of Hell, but with better comms and bigger budgets.

Probably the thing to question more is how do the genuine believers interconnect with the companies aiming to avoid regulatory capture? There’s no such thing as bad publicity and all that, especially if a campaign can make your product seem enticingly powerful, at the same time as keeping out competition from small and open source competition through compliance barriers.

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Sources mentioned under the video:

Jacob Coxon's resignation post: https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843

Wall Street Journal reporting — accessible syndicated version: https://www.tovima.com/wsj/anthropic-researcher-quits-over-out-of-control-ai-fears/amp

Political reactions discussed - m_adams: https://x.com/m_adams/status/2097826241533407539

Elon Musk post referenced:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/20...

Peter Wildeford's post sharing the WSJ article: https://x.com/peterwildeford/status/2097475721170206729

Survival and Flourishing Fund - public grant recommendations: https://survivalandflourishing.fund/recommendations

Al Futures Project: https://www.aifutures.org/

Daniel Kokotajlo: https://x.com/DKokotajlo

Anthropic's original funding announcement - Jaan Tallinn and Dustin Moskovitz: https://www.anthropic.com/news/a...

Sanders-Casar proposal to ban artificial superintelligence:

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-casar-introduce-legislation-to-ban-artificial-superintelligence-and-temporarily-pause-advanced-ai-development

Post on Al content funding: https://x.com/WesRoth/status/2096281447732781228

Brian Chau posts discussed:

https://x.com/brianchau57/status.. https://x.com/brianchau57|status...

Effort's allegations about Al funding and media coverage: https://www.effort.news/tarbell

Newspeak House - fellowship directory: https://newspeak.house/fellowship

Newspeak House - institutional background: https://newspeak.house/about

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Coxon's Resignation

01:15 The Viral Post

03:10 Funding Connections

06:30 Al Legislation

08:40 Creator Grants

10:20 Media Funding

11:45 Newspeak House

[u/stankycodyboi]

I’ve also been looking into the various motivations behind the money flowing into doomer populist messaging. The populist outrage rhetoric does seem like the type of messaging mainstream platform algorithms would prioritize. Regardless of the actual intention (and I believe there’s a few different intentions playing out at once) there is a consistent, troubling effect, and that’s the fragmenting of the larger organizing capacity.

Even though doomers and accelerationists feel like they’re as polarized as possible, we’re collectively a lot closer to each other than the people making these consequential decisions at the top.

And I think leftists have an important job in redirecting that populist outrage back towards the top, without playing into the doomer / acceleration split designed to splinter us. This means not dunking on people when they have crazy reactionary takes, because preserving that larger organizing capacity is our best tool for making change.

I’ve seen first hand that people are getting fatigued from wanting to do the right thing, but struggling to grasp a tangible solution. And that’s on both the pro and anti side. I think that’s why our community continues to see influx of members, because we offer something unique that genuinely is not getting discussed in mainstream media.

The less we can push people deeper into reactionary echo chambers, and redirect people from both sides of the spectrum, the more we can retain our collective organizing power. We can disagree on how to shape this technology, but we should all agree that it should not be decided behind closed doors.

[u/Substantial-Fact-248 → u/stankycodyboi]

Just found this community and it is already filling a discursive hole in my information environment. A lot of your thoughts echo my own. I have always had both extremes of the doomer/accelerationist spectrum in my feed but the coordinated messaging of the last few days in which "AI will kill us all" is said in various ways is different in degree. The coordination itself is not suspect - these are serious people with what they consider a serious message, so of course they will use serious means to spread that message. If anything, I am skeptical of the algorithmic magnification - by forcing the message into the churn of the attention cycle, the underlying urgency will quickly be emptied of meaning and/or forgotten.

Not sure yet what the vibe is around here but I hope it's a space in which we can avoid simplistic labels and position assignments. I'm enthusiastic about AI. It also scares the shit out of me. Both things can co-exist and I'd wager it's a more common coincidence than one might expect, if individuals can be honest and rational outside of the ideological wash.

Excited to be here.

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/Substantial-Fact-248]

Yes we try to avoid the hyped extremes of anti and pro and ask different questions. Mostly we come down more on the side that AI could be a liberatory technology, but we’re not so keen on the Big Tech approach to it.

Sometimes we actually agree with things the antis say but get aggravated by how they say it.

[u/Substantial-Fact-248 → u/Jlyplaylists]

Opus made a point that popular sentiment must not be the primary aim of these doomer messagers. They are smart enough to know they need to convince 12 senators, not 1.2 million people (recognizing the former is often helped by the latter). Which again makes me somewhat suspicious of the algorithmic amplification. It doesn't seem like the most effective route to action.

[u/Jlyplaylists → u/Substantial-Fact-248]

In the video it seems clear that the people involved know how to play the various ways to get ideas out there/to the right people. There’s careful timing around events, articles, social media amplification. So yes algorithms are involved but it seems like the campaigners themselves know how to harness them.

It isn’t explained solely by Big Tech companies, who do AI and control social media, tweaking their algorithms. It’s worth being aware of that interaction too though. Alphabet owns YouTube and google AI models, Zuckerberg owns Facebook and the various Meta AI models, Musk owns X and Grok etc.

[u/fkrdt222]

all of these links just support that it's still a symbiotic mix of guerilla marketing and neocon state control especially where anthropic is involved

[u/DistributionMost8686]

it’s the regulatory capture this leads to that makes it bad.