If he says this, it sounds like he doesn't understand climate change, or AI, or basic economics.

What makes AI dangerous isn't AI itself, it's the self-serving negative-sum ways in which its owners will use it. Same as with any other technology - including fossil fuels.

We default to permitting new technologies, be they big or small, without requiring their inventors to convince us that society will be better off for them. Unsurprisingly, this results in net-negative ones occasionally being developed and adopted.