“Everyone, all of these guys think it would be a catastrophe if anyone else won the race first. And I'm sort of like, I just believe in one fewer AI CEO than they do.”
Odd Lots · Money & Markets · October 2026
Tracy Alloway asked how AI lab leaders square the belief that the technology could wipe out humanity with racing to build it anyway. Soares says the people who run these companies were selected for thinking the problem is who holds the leash, so each lab's founding story is about keeping a rival from getting there first.
Transcript
…are like, don't worry, we have fume hoods. That's, you know, so that we don't need to breathe the mercury. That's why we're going to successfully get the potion of immortality. It's like this, the type of safety theater that they're doing is not the type that you need to succeed at this problem.
…now when they're developing AI, which is on the one hand, we think this is very powerful technology that has some risk at exterminating all of humanity. On the other hand, we're going to keep doing it pretty much as fast as possible because if we don't, someone else will, et cetera, et cetera.
I think there's probably a lot going on. One thing to remember is that the guys who run these companies are sort of selected for the ones who think, who thought that the problem was about who is holding the leash on the super powerful machine, rather than the problem being how do you actually create a very powerful machine that is shaping the world for good. And you sort of see this in a lot of the founding reasons of like, oh, we're founding this because Sam Allman won't do the job well, or Sam Allman and Elon Musk are founding this because like they think Demesabes shouldn't have all this power. And then like Elon's leaving because he no longer likes Sam. You know, it's all about, what if the other guy gets it first, right? Everyone, all of These guys think would be a catastrophe if anyone else won the race first. And I'm sort of like, I just believe in one fewer AI CEO than they do. You know, I think there's probably a lot more going on, too. I…
Let me ask a related question, which you hear a lot more about it now than I think you would have a year or certainly two years ago. But when people start talking about AI safety risks or the idea that it could kill us all, a lot of other people will say in response, this is just fear-mongering…
capital. I was about to say,
or nowadays, it'll be like, well, you know, they're worried about their valuations and they want limits on other people building stuff so that they can retain their edge. What do you say in response to those people?
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