>Is there any technology you can't say that about?
Yes: all the technologies humanity has invented except for AI and maybe possibly nuclear bombs.
Or am I misinterpreting your question?
Look, it may well be something he believes, and he’s free to prognosticate (or market) however he likes, but I see absolutely nothing to support the number outside of his own opinion.
Besides, there’s no time limit on p(doom), so it’s completely unfalsifiable (“on a long enough timescale…”), and it’s about the destruction of humanity which means it’s unprovable as well. That, in my view, makes his 70% guess a sensational statement lacking scientific merit.
> There’s a [arbitrary number] percent chance that [technology] will destroy or catastrophically harm humanity
Try these: social media, the Internet, the large hadron collider, Starlink, Neuralink, iPhones, iDrones, quantum computers, regular computers, the 2038 bug, the Y2K bug, electric cars, gasoline cars, the great firewall of China, the not so great firewalls of asbestos, mRNA technology, gain of function research, nuclear bombs, nuclear energy, paper clip manufacturers, scissors.
I’m not saying it’s true that these have a 70 percent chance of destroying or catastrophically harming humanity, but couldn’t you make the argument?