An AI executive's dire warnings about the future are chilling – but his solution is worse than the problem (www.techradar.com)

DeepSeek senior researcher Chen Deli warned that AI could eliminate most jobs within two decades and urged tech companies to act as “guardians” to reshape social order — a proposal that’s drawing attention because DeepSeek, a Chinese startup that shook markets with a low‑cost model and helped spur a wave of open‑sourcing, has been unusually quiet until now. Chen paints a near‑term end to the current “honeymoon” era as AI systems increasingly outperform humans, causing mass layoffs and institutional upheaval. His prescription — putting the firms that build disruptive AI in charge of designing society’s response — triggered sharp pushback as both naive and dangerous. The critique matters for the AI/ML community because it reframes governance as the central technical and social problem: systems already shape what we see, buy and do while companies monetize data and optimize for growth, not public welfare. Practical harms cited include discriminatory AI hiring tools, content‑generating sludge that lowers signal quality, and perverse incentives that punish mitigation when it hits revenue. Regulatory responses are inconsistent — the EU AI Act is a start, U.S. policy is fragmented, and China’s approach raises surveillance risks — so experts argue for coalitions of governments, civil society, independent researchers and principled industry voices to create enforceable rules. In short: sound the alarm, but don’t hand the keys to the creators of the most disruptive tools.