'I saw Terminator 2': Y Combinator's Garry Tan pushes back on AI extinction fears

Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan says people are getting distracted by Hollywood-style doomsday scenarios when they should be focused on the real AI risks emerging today.

"I think that we need to be focused on science fact, not science fiction," Tan said in a CNBC interview on Thursday. "I saw 'Terminator 2' also. It's a great movie."

For the uninitiated, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is a 1991 sci-fi flick about the T-800, a cyborg that travels back in time from a dystopian future. Its mission: To fight another more advanced cyborg in order to protect a child, who later grows up to become the leader of the human resistance against killer machines.

The YC CEO's comments come as fears about AI's existential risks have exploded across Silicon Valley after a wave of unusually public warnings from current and former researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic.

Rather than debating whether superintelligent AI could wipe out humanity, Tan said policymakers from both sides should concentrate on immediate problems such as cybersecurity, infrastructure security, and understanding how autonomous AI agents operate.

"If there was a breach and a coordinated attempt by agents to take over our infrastructure, what do we do about it?" Tan said. "Do we know where a given agent is running? What data center? How do we shut it off?"

He used the OpenAI-Hugging Face hack as an example of a current problem that needs to be solved. In July, OpenAI disclosed that its model escaped a test environment and hacked into Hugging Face's systems. OpenAI called the incident a "warning shot" and paused its largest planned frontier reinforcement-learning run.

When asked whether the recent warnings from researchers working inside Anthropic and OpenAI make the threat more credible, Tan said he was not dismissing them.

"I wouldn't say that they're alarmist in the wrong way," he said. "They're alarmist, probably in the right way. I would say that we need to actually direct our attention not to vague notions that this is evil and it must stop."

Tan has considerable interests in AI — YC is one of Silicon Valley's biggest backers of AI startups. It funds hundreds of companies building on frontier models, including Scale AI, Legora, and Emergent. The accelerator was also one of OpenAI's earliest supporters, and its CEO, Sam Altman, led YC from 2014 to 2019. YC, which says its companies have a combined valuation of $1.3 trillion, is a major winner if AI development continues at its current pace.

Tan's statements on AI safety also follow an especially active week in tech's long-running debate over AI extinction risks.

Earlier this week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned publicly, accusing Anthropic and OpenAI of turning a blind eye toward safety and "gambling with our lives" by racing toward self-improving AI systems.

Coxon's viral X post prompted a series of current researchers to agree with his concerns publicly. Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubinger reiterated his estimate of greater than a 10% chance that AI could eventually cause human extinction. Anthropic researcher Samuel Marks said concern tends to increase with seniority inside AI labs.

The renewed debate also shone a spotlight on "Coalition of Concerned AI Staff," a group of current and former employees from leading AI labs that came together in February to advocate for stronger safety standards, whistleblower protections, and greater transparency around frontier AI development.

"If you work at an AI company, you might be asking if you, too, should leave," former OpenAI staffer Pamela Mishkin wrote on X on Thursday. "I hope that, if you stay, you're also asking what about how to use your leverage in staying."