David Sacks, the longtime Silicon Valley investor turned special adviser to the White House for AI and crypto, has weighed in on the AI “doomer” debate. In a widely discussed post on X, Sacks laid out a vision for AI’s present and future, arguing the fear-mongering in recent years about AI’s malevolence was deeply misguided and humanity remains firmly in the driver’s seat. Sacks added that job loss fears are overhyped, and instead, people stand to benefit most by learning to harness AI for new opportunities.
Also, Sacks argued, the ultimate “doomer” prediction, of the technology spiralling into an uncontrollable, superintelligent dominance out of a science-fiction movie, hasn’t come to pass. And on the economic front, he envisions a landscape that’s more competitive, decentralized, and fundamentally human-driven than many anticipated.
In a long statement posted on X over the weekend, Sacks declared “the Doomer narratives were wrong,” taking a stance in the yearslong AI debate. Sacks assures his audience that “right now the current situation is Goldilocks.” This means Sacks comes down somewhere close to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, who has staked a middle position between Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, whose war of words over the future of AI is growing ever more heated. Furthermore, Sacks has four reasons that AI’s impact on the economy is just fine, actually.
Doomer narratives assumed one leading AI model would suddenly trigger a rapid “take-off” to artificial general intelligence (AGI)—a runaway scenario in which a single AI would quickly self-improve and leaves humanity, and all other model competitors, in the dust.
Instead, Sacks points out, the reality is quite the opposite: Top models are “clustering around similar performance benchmarks,” and companies are “leapfrogging each other” with each new version released. This ongoing rivalry and specialization—whether in coding, math, or personality—show that no godlike superintelligence is running away with the lead.
A crucial feature is the five major U.S. companies vigorously competing on “frontier models,” Sacks writes. It wasn’t clear which companies Sacks was referring to, as frontier AI work is being done by the major tech firms Meta, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, and X.ai, as well as the significant startups OpenAI and Anthropic. (Sacks’ firm, Craft Ventures, moved to divest stakes in both Meta and X.ai when Sacks began advising the White House.)
Regardless, Sacks says this dynamic “brings out the best in everyone and helps America win the AI race,” as high-performing models from multiple companies diffuse power and prevent any single entity from establishing unchecked dominance. The balance of power among these players means AI progress is distributed and avoids what Sacks called the “Orwellian” scenario of one model or faction ruling them all.
