I enjoyed this lovely rant by Timnit Gebru today. It's titled something like "AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms,"
People will go to great lengths to avoid believing truths that dramatically challenge their worldviews. Consider the case of Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, who escaped from Auschwitz and were initially met with disbelief when they described the atrocities they'd witnessed.
No we're not. The seventh day adventists also believe that the world is about to end, why are we not obligated to treat that threat as real?