There has been no shortage of warnings from AI's top executives about existential threats over the years.
At the time, many thought this was in the realm of sci-fi and the real threats were comparatively far more mundane: job losses, cheating in exams. Three years later, many of those same voices don't seem to be so sure.
On Saturday head of AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, urged the pace of development to be slowed down - the executives of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk said they agreed with him.
Meanwhile AI researcher Jacob Coxon - who quit Anthropic - told the BBC on Sunday staff who were developing the systems were "genuinely frightened" for the future of humanity.
America is widely understood to be terrified of losing the race to build the most powerful AI to China.
On Sunday President Trump made his own views clear, claiming the US was ahead of China in the AI race and declaring: "Whoever wins AI, wins."
China isn't renowned for wanting to come second. The problem then too was that nobody wanted to go first.
Although Amodei in his post proposed a three-point plan that included independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed, industry-wide regulation and global regulation, some observers question how this would work in practice.
Zitron said stopping training AI models would leave them vulnerable to Chinese rivals.
"Their margins might improve but their products will be captured in amber and distilled by Chinese labs."
Leading computer scientist Professor Dame Wendy Hall says the current crisis is all about the companies not behaving responsibly enough.