Nvidia's Jensen Huang Breaks with Altman, Musk and Hassabis: AI Fear-Mongering Is 'Irresponsible'
The Nvidia chief breaks with an industry whose own top leaders warn that AI could wipe out humanity, calling the fear 'not grounded in science.'
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang categorically rejects warnings from AI researchers that the technology could lead to humanity's extinction within a few years. In an interview with CBS News correspondent Jo Ling Kent, published September 20, 2026 — CBS states only that it took place 'on Friday' — he calls such statements exaggerated 'doomsday narratives.'
'2030 is not going to be the end of the world. There is 0% chance that it will be the end of the world,' Huang said, according to CBS News. 'Scaring people is unnecessary. It is irresponsible.'
He justified the rejection by saying such predictions are 'not grounded in science.' It is worth stressing: this is a categorical claim from an interested party, not a scientific finding, and one of the most striking aspects of the remarks is precisely the absolute form in which they are made.
What Huang Was Responding To
The interview came just days after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, as CBS describes him, had warned on social media that AI developers 'seriously believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade.' According to Nature, which writes that Coxon told The Wall Street Journal he had resigned from Anthropic, his post received over 100 million views within 24 hours. Coxon immediately received support from colleagues: Evan Hubinger, head of Anthropic's alignment science team, responded, according to Fox Business, that 'Jacob is correct here – we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!', adding his own estimated extinction risk of over 10 percent within the next decade.
Coxon is not alone. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published — on September 12, four days after Coxon's resignation — a 3,800-word essay titled 'We Must Pace the Frontier' on his personal website. 'We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,' Amodei wrote, according to The Atlantic. According to The Financial Express, which builds on the CBS interview, the essay has the backing of Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis. Altman said: 'I agree with Dario that we need to slow down the frontier. This has been a major theme in the discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks.' Musk and Hassabis also lent their support, according to the same source. Huang thus emerges as a prominent voice breaking with what has, across much of the industry, been a consensus of caution.
The Regulatory Argument: Existing Laws Are Enough
Huang rejected the need for new AI regulation, arguing that existing US product-liability and unauthorized-entry laws are sufficient. He said, according to CBS, that he agrees with President Trump's view that the AI industry does not need additional guardrails.
His more contentious point was aimed at those calling for a slowdown. 'Go and read between the lines,' he said, according to The Financial Express. 'They're not actually asking for more laws. They're asking to be relieved of the laws we already have, and I think that that's a problem.' This must be read as Huang's own interpretation of others' motives; he did not name which companies he meant, and Amodei, Altman, Musk and Hassabis have not responded to the accusation in the available sources.
The Conflicts of Interest That Should Be Weighed
Huang's position must be read against his own financial interest. Demand for Nvidia's chips, which power the large language models behind AI agents, has according to CBS driven the company's market value up to $5.3 trillion, making it the world's most valuable company. The company's earnings depend directly on continued rapid AI deployment — the very thing he argues against slowing.
Huang defended his credibility by pointing to that same connection: 'Our company's success is directly connected to the safe deployment of products and services. If we don't continue with that, our value will be diminished.' It is worth noting, however, that Fox Business, which carried the interview on September 21, and The Financial Express provide no independent confirmation of CBS — both are based on the same interview (Fox Business).
Open Questions
Several open questions remain. All the quotes from Huang come via a single CBS interview — Fox Business and The Financial Express are secondary accounts, not independent confirmation. Huang's '0% chance' claim is presented without any scientific basis in the sources, and its absolute form — not 'a small chance,' but zero — is exactly the kind of categorical judgment Huang himself criticizes others for issuing. And the question of whether he is right that slowdown advocates are in practice seeking liability exemptions, or whether they genuinely mean what they say, is his reading of the situation, not something the sources can resolve.