# Alex Stamos on Silicon Valley's 'nihilism,' and the line between real AI risks and imagined ones — retained record

> Retained news record from news:digg-verification:semafor.com.

Canonical: https://highsignal.app/data/records/96d25ca654a708a8

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source: [news](https://highsignal.app/data/news) (news:digg-verification:semafor.com)  published 2026-10-12 10:33 ingested 2026-10-12 10:33

[original source ↗](https://www.semafor.com/article/10/07/2026/alex-stamos-future-proof)

## retained text



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In the debut episode of Future Proof from Semafor Technology, Cognition CISO and former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos goes off on the “nihilism” ripping through Silicon Valley.
He joins Semafor Tech editor Reed Albergotti to discuss the very real risks of AI, and the wholly imagined ones shaped by “almost religious beliefs” held by people at AI companies. “These things are not conscious, they do not have souls,” he says.
Stamos says he plans to “work the problem” to help shorten the inevitable “dark age” of cybersecurity. “What you should not do is just quit your job and freak everybody out,” he says.
Plus, why nobody would work for Mark Zuckerberg if he resembled Aaron Sorkin’s celluloid version in the upcoming film The Social Reckoning.
```



document fetched 2026-10-12 10:33 · canonical https://semafor.com/article/10/07/2026/alex-stamos-future-proof