Steve Eisman is not concerned about a robot-led apocalypse. Instead, he believes AI companies that warn about doomsday may be pursuing a specific agenda.
Eisman, who accurately predicted the 2008 housing market collapse, sees an ulterior motive behind urgent appeals from leading AI labs to slow the technology’s development.
The prospect of an AI apocalypse has been a major topic of discussion since former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon publicly resigned over concerns that AI developers were not treating safety seriously enough. While experts remain divided about the likelihood of a catastrophic outcome, Eisman believes the alarm is driven by a particular motive.
“They realize that there are no moats around their business whatsoever and they’re trying to manufacture a crisis,” Eisman told CNBC on Thursday. “That’s what I think is happening.”
Eisman explained his own theory about the AI doomsday narrative, pointing to the incentives he believes tech companies have for promoting the idea that their technology could destroy the world.
He argues that they want to create a crisis that could lead to regulation, which they can then manipulate to establish a duopoly and replace the competitive barriers that once protected their businesses.
“Tokenmaxxing is over,” Eisman stated. “The open weight models are taking big market share. I think these companies are very nervous.”
Eisman is not the only person arguing that the era of tokenmaxxing—the practice of maximizing AI use—has come to an end. Citadel Securities recently said rising costs have served as a reality check for the AI trade, slowing some of its momentum.
Eisman disclosed that he recently reduced his own exposure to AI. The move came a few weeks after he raised concerns about the AI market and described OpenAI and Anthropic as the “Achilles’ heel” of the AI trade. He said much of the risk comes from the industry’s heavy dependence on the success of the two leading AI startups.
“They’re such a huge percentage of the entire chain, so if something were to happen to one of those two companies, then the chain would really fall apart,” he said. “Between the two, OpenAI is the weaker company.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently urged that the pace of AI development be slowed, a position also supported by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. Eisman expressed skepticism about Amodei’s motives, particularly because Anthropic is preparing for what could be a historic IPO.
“When you talk about [how] we should slow down because things are dangerous, my response is ‘Really? Postpone your IPO,’” he said. “Put your money where your mouth is. Is anybody talking about postponing IPOs or postponing raising capital? I haven’t heard anything.”