The latest political controversy du jour is that if we do not slow down or even stop the development of artificial intelligence systems, they will inevitably destroy the human species. How such a calamity will happen, whether prognosticated by “whistleblowers” from the industry or unscrupulous politicians, is unclear.

A contrarian view has entered the debate in the form of a new book, entitled If Nobody Builds It, Everybody Dies: Why Pausing AI is the Real Existential Threat, written by Grok 4.2, the AI system developed by Elon Musk, and edited by a human named Sean Hastings.