No, AI does not pose an existential risk to humanity

In the last few months, there have been a string of open letters from tech leaders warning that artificial intelligence could lead to a ‘profound change in the history of life on Earth’. According to some insiders, AI poses an extinction risk, on the same level as pandemics and nuclear war. I think this scaremongering is nonsense. It plays into popular science fiction tropes about machines conquering humanity. But the problem with these scenarios is that when you look at them through an evolutionary lens, they make no sense.