Professor Says AI Doom Distracts Accountability

Tobias Osborne, a theoretical physics professor at Leibniz Universität Hannover, wrote an essay this week arguing that fixation on AI apocalypse scenarios distracts regulators and lets companies evade responsibility for current harms. He cites worker exploitation, mass scraping of artists' work, environmental costs, and psychological harms, and urges applying product-liability and duty-of-care laws instead of prioritizing speculative extinction risks.