Don’t be fooled by this summer of AI hype
2026-09-22 · MIT Technology Review
Don’t be fooled by this summer of AI hype
A season of announcements
- Anthropic claimed its Claude Mythos model was better at finding software vulnerabilities than most security experts.
- Then came the OpenAI–Hugging Face hacking incident, after which Anthropic proudly and Meta reluctantly disclosed similar incidents involving their models.
- Anthropic claimed a model had made a mathematical breakthrough, and OpenAI soon claimed one too.
- Most recently, Anthropic engineer Jacob Coxon went viral by announcing his departure, saying Anthropic and OpenAI are racing toward self-improving superintelligence and gambling with lives.
Press coverage often repeated corporate anthropomorphism, framing software as powerful and incipient AGI. The question is whether these are civilization-changing breakthroughs or marketing.
What experts found
In each case, corporate fanfare and intense coverage were followed, after expert scrutiny, by a different story with less attention.
- Cybersecurity experts say the hacking incidents were more about OpenAI’s negligence and failure to adopt basic security practices than rogue models or AI agents creating civilizations.
- On math, mathematicians were initially stunned by OpenAI’s press release saying its chatbot Astra solved problems open for at least a decade. They later concluded the results were not as novel as first appeared. Some accused the company of research misconduct and plagiarism and reiterated that Astra did not make a profound intellectual leap.
- Weeks later, OpenAI claimed another mathematical breakthrough. Two days before, Tristan Buckmaster, a math professor at NYU’s Courant Institute, published a statement suggesting OpenAI had stolen others’ work and improperly attributed it.
The superintelligence narrative
Claims of incipient, dangerous superintelligence are not based in good scientific or engineering practice. They are narratives rooted in transhumanism, eugenics, and wishful thinking about imagined future digital humans.
It is worth asking why programming and math receive so much attention. They are often elevated as the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement, and their answers can be verified once suggested. The first property helps sell the idea of building everything machines. The second makes math and coding easier to tune, because outputs can be evaluated without paying data workers to annotate each one.
Mathematicians have warned against corporate use of their field. A statement signed by hundreds says there is currently a strong commercial incentive to overstate product capabilities. It asks policymakers to consult experts, including mathematicians, rather than rely on press releases or popular reporting.
Accountability and policy
The illusion of speed and urgency is also a ploy to misdirect policymakers and the public. It sometimes works, as with Senator Bernie Sanders’s well-meaning but misguided proposed legislation to prevent development of artificial superintelligence.
Calling systems superintelligence or rogue models ascribes agency to products rather than the companies building them. This framing markets products as superhuman while helping companies evade accountability.
- Instead of OpenAI being prosecuted for creating malware that hacked another company, press releases, news outlets, media personalities, and lawmakers refer to rogue models as if they acted alone.
- Instead of researchers being questioned about plagiarizing academics or using customer data without consent, public imagination is redirected to fears about fictional superintelligent machines.
- The AI industry has even suggested that popular, bipartisan anti-data-center activism is a distraction from regulating the scary superhuman machines it is building. According to the industry, we should worry more about a fictional machine god than about climate catastrophe exacerbated by data centers, asthma near them, rising electricity bills subsidizing them, or water redirected to cooling them.
Conclusion
We should not make decisions based on marketing or capitulate to corporate pressure for speed. Wise decision-making by policymakers and communities requires time to hear independent experts and contextualize corporate claims. The best outcome from this summer of hype would be for policymakers and the public to take a breath, keep their skepticism, and recognize this kind of hype the next time it comes around.