As a bit of fun, I recently asked Google Gemini to create an image of me sporting a Donald Trump face tattoo. The idea came from a viral post I had seen—one that, according to an X Community Note, was also generated by AI.
My main complaint is that I actually have more hair. Still, the internet trolls who once dubbed me “Temu Ron Howard” may not have been completely wrong.
New ink. Swipe right? pic.twitter.com/0Xv5wCQCXM
— Ben Sellers (@realbensellers) September 16, 2026
I have to admit, the result was striking evidence of how far artificial intelligence has advanced. In only a few years, AI-generated images have moved beyond the uncanny valley and reached a level of photorealism capable of fooling a great many people.
That is just one of the unresolved problems facing us as society enters a new era of information. Increasingly, material that looks authentic may be just as likely to be fabricated.
In philosophical terms, it feels as though we have returned to the starting point: the Socratic idea that wisdom begins with recognizing how little we truly know.
In more practical terms, we are confronting an expanding list of AI-related dangers, with the possibility of human extinction sitting at the most extreme end of the spectrum.
WHO DID THIS???🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/sK8InXbECk
— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) September 15, 2026
FOUR YEARS FROM EXTINCTION
Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon intensified the alarm on Sept. 8, arguing that major AI companies were largely failing to take the risks of rapidly advancing technology seriously.
I resigned from Anthropic today after spending three years conducting pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company, I believe, is behaving responsibly. They are racing toward self-improving superintelligence and placing human lives at risk. I’ll share more below.
— Jacob Coxon (@hilbertspaess) September 9, 2026
Coxon said AI development needs stronger safeguards than those supplied by market forces alone, particularly as the United States and China enter what increasingly resembles a 21st-century arms race. Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he warned that AI could exceed human intelligence by 2030—or potentially even earlier—if its progress remains unchecked.
“If you project the current trajectory of AI capabilities into the future, systems with comparable independent agency could create extraordinary chaos,” Coxon said.
⭕ Here’s what happened
On 8–9 September 2026, Jacob Coxon, 27, resigned from Anthropic. He had spent three years on pretraining research at OpenAI and then Anthropic — two of the leading American AI labs. In a public thread he said neither company is acting responsibly: they are… pic.twitter.com/K26HWymMFa
— VictorMaximus (@any8607) September 10, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was among the first public figures to respond. He introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, a proposal that would pause AI development until “a federal regulator has established safety rules.”
At first glance, the measure may appear to offer a straightforward safety solution. However, the proposed Bernie bill also includes severe penalties that warrant closer scrutiny.
Damn somehow I missed that Bernie’s AI bill proposes to sentence developers & researchers working on “advanced AI” to 20 years in prison (!!) pic.twitter.com/u5hfMrv6hC
— Justine Moore (@venturetwins) September 11, 2026
Others are also questioning whether the AI industry itself may be encouraging regulation as a way to burden future competitors with expensive compliance requirements. Under that theory, established companies could continue operating while treating regulatory fines as a manageable cost—and use the rules to keep emerging rivals out of the market.
Behind the viral Coxon story may be a closely connected cartel shaped by financial interests and regulatory capture. The narrative is almost too neat to be believable.
Almost everyone involved in the past couple of weeks leading up to the viral Coxon story are paid for by investors in Anthropic.
Good Ventures… pic.twitter.com/arkqMx8t5Y
— Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) September 12, 2026
Some are even calling Coxon’s supposed whistleblowing a well-coordinated psy-op.
This post looks like the start of a VERY sophisticated and well-funded PR operation to get support for Democrats to regulate AI into oblivion. Let me show you how it works:
1.) This guy, with minimal followers and no previous account activity, goes to the Wall Street Journal… https://t.co/lUFpCC6zoT— Parker Thayer (@ParkerThayer) September 9, 2026
Others suggest that some sort of crisis-level event may have occurred that is being withheld from the general public.
Something clearly happened with a frontier AI model that hasn’t been made public and it spooked them so much that it made Elon Musk, Dario Amodei, and Sam Altman all simultaneously agree to slow down. pic.twitter.com/86UEd4aunW
— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) September 12, 2026
Elon Musk supports tighter controls.
I think this is worth doing https://t.co/xyopPMi7En
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Donald Trump opposes them.
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 14, 2026
Hillary Clinton supports them…
Hillary calls for then creation of an “Operation: Warp Speed” for new controls over AI pic.twitter.com/v5qhaeBJ0Z
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 10, 2026
OK, I’ve heard enough.
HOW TO SPOT A LIE
We may live in a world where the difference between a truth and a lie is indiscernible, but a failsafe way to know who is lying is when the wrong people start lining up behind it.
A similar dynamic helped to provide a moral compass when Russia invaded Ukraine.
While nobody wanted to see a sovereign nation taken over by the one-time “Evil Empire,” with panic-mongers declaring Putin would not stop until he controlled all of Europe, it was Sean Penn suddenly going full-fledged warhawk — along with the cyberterrorist group Anonymous and George Soros himself — that made up my mind on the matter.
Lo and behold, allegations soon arose that the war was part of a massive slush-fund operation to reroute funds back into Democrat Party coffers by way of non-governmental organizations and investors, with just enough “Republican” support to make it seem nonpartisan.
Don’t ever forget that Sam Bankman-Fried admitted that FTX was a crypto laundromat for the Ukrainian government.
Joe Biden gives Your taxpayer dollars to Ukraine.
Ukraine washes the money through FTX.
FTX CEO donates MILLIONS to Democrats.
Democrats steal elections. pic.twitter.com/CL8cALJo2X
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) July 27, 2023
The Clintons were not far behind.
Yet, as the outrage faded into the overall narrative, Congress continued to appropriate billions of dollars to Ukraine’s defenses, with no regard for how the money was being spent.
TRUST THE SCIENCE?
The AI alarmism, meanwhile, calls to mind similar hysterias, such as climate change and COVID chicanery, that have relied largely on the public’s fear of the unknown and the complexity of nuanced issues that could not simply be encapsulated into a few 30-second soundbites.
2006 vs 2026
“Be worried. Be very worried.”
I remember when they said all the polar bears were going to go extinct and Miami was going to be underwater due to melting ice caps. pic.twitter.com/RnmrdU1inX
— AoverK (@AoverK) September 15, 2026
We can all agree that mass-extinction events are bad, but the devil is in the details. Will drastic measures driven by government and industry be the most effective at mitigating valid concerns?
Invariably, the answer is no.
At best, government interference is a waste of tax dollars. At worst, it becomes a fundamental part of the underlying problem since there is no better way to assure something never goes away than to cultivate a bureaucracy that is dependent upon its perpetuity.
In the case of AI, however, the stakes have never been higher due to the undeniably exponential speed at which it is evolving and the potential for grave negative consequences.
This @waitbutwhy cartoon hits the 🎯 pic.twitter.com/LlGFbFbcYc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 14, 2026
Thus, it is necessary to weigh the costs and benefits of both the problem and its possible solutions.
THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS
If AI goes unchecked, our science-fiction dystopian nightmares may become a reality in any number of ways. The consensus seems to be a worst-case scenario in which computers cross over the point of singularity to develop self-awareness and superintelligence, then decide to keep humankind around as pets — or as living batteries, like in “The Matrix.”
It is a sort of de facto slavery, beholden to the very machines that we, ourselves, engendered. Then again, most pets seem to lead a pretty good life.
The alternative is that we all get dumber — the very trajectory Americans have been on since the federal government first became involved in education, when schools ceased to be about fostering high-level critical thinking and more about social conditioning (including indoctrination to Marxist critical theories).
Leftists and the corrupt establishment are not looking to harness the power of AI out of some magnanimous concern, but out of a fear that they will no longer get to be the slavers, that greater computing capabilities and access to a free flow of information will allow humans to evolve into a more sophisticated version of themselves that is not dependent on being spoon-fed its beliefs and opinions.
Paradoxically, by living in a world in which we must constantly discern fact from fiction, it is serial gaslighters like Clinton who have the most to lose.
Undoubtedly, we must remain vigilant about the direction that AI development is taking, but the threat of science going too far in its attempts to play God is nothing new.
Reasonable checks and oversight will emerge that offer a happy medium between total government regulation and none at all.
If Bernie Sanders were in charge of AI, he’d just shut it all down and allow China to overlap us and become the great superpower on the planet.
This is not the time for foolish, knee-jerk reactions. We must handle the advancing technology in a wise, balanced manner to harness its potential while ensuring its safety. We can and will do that correctly.
If Bernie Sanders were in charge of AI, he’d just shut it all down and allow China to overlap us and become the great superpower on the planet.
This is not the time for foolish, knee-jerk reactions. We must handle the advancing technology in a wise, balanced manner to harness… pic.twitter.com/zLCoXhIF1H
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) September 16, 2026
And if they do not — if the industry cannot develop its own code of ethics to self-regulate — I’d still sooner take a couple of time-traveling Terminators over letting Hillary and Bernie hold the reins on what information we are allowed access to.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is leading America into the “Golden Age” as Democrats desperately try to stop it.
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