People don’t know who or what to believe about all these new AI warnings and calls for a slowdown.

Yes, this new wave of concern, “especially since it is coming from titans of the AI industry itself,” feels like “a political watershed moment,” as CNN’s Stephen Collinson wrote this morning.

But many — I suspect most — viewers and readers feel lost when they hear phrases like “pacing the frontier” and see references to the “Hugging Face incident.”

And they wonder about the motives of the people in positions of power.

Of all the things Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said over the weekend, this appeal to candor stood out to me: “I won’t lie to you — there are real dangers. And I think for too long the industry lied to people about the fact that this technology had risks.”

So why, then, should people trust the AI industry now?

Anderson Cooper interviewed Amodei on Saturday, and the full interview will air on “AC360” tonight. Cooper said, “Does he believe that this will wipe out the human race? I asked him three times. He didn’t say yes, but he also did not say no. And if he doesn’t believe that it’s going to wipe out the human race, you would think he would say no.”

You would think!

Some people are searching for details about why execs like Amodei seem so spooked. You can see it on the Google Trends website: “Will AI take over the world” is a breakout search right now. “How could AI take over” is also a rising query.

But honestly, most of the trending AI-related searches are from people looking for chatbots and other AI tools for work, school and home.

“By now, we’ve all become accustomed to AI-industry figures issuing dire prophecies about the power of their products,” The Atlantic’s Will Oremus wrote. Yet Amodei’s message still stood out “for its urgency and for the moment at which it arrived. Worries about AI agents running amok have gone from hypothetical to real after OpenAI, Anthropic, and others reported alarming incidents in recent weeks.”

If you’re looking to get caught up, CNN’s Hadas Gold explained “AI’s confusing terms” here. And the WSJ has a great new long read about how this “crisis” moment came about due to a “clash between money and safety.”

Skepticism is coming through loud and clear. “It’s difficult to believe what they’re saying,” Stephanie Ruhle said on MS NOW this morning, “because at the same time, they’re trying to go public [with IPOs] and win over the American people and saying ‘You must have us, you must want us, we’re the future’ — the future that can essentially destroy you.”

Her guest Max Chafkin said, “You could see this as an earnest, legitimate fear about the existential risk with AI. You could also see it as an effort to form a cartel and protect their margins.” Chafkin suggested some AI thought leaders are high on their own supply, pointing to excessive chatbot use and “AI psychosis” as a problem.

Media critic Jeff Jarvis wrote last night that too many journalists are “unquestioningly” lapping up “the doomers’ assertions that their creations are capable of such danger.”

He urges newsrooms to approach those claims with more “challenge, skepticism, or balance.”

And for another critical take, check out what Timnit Gebru told WIRED’s Lauren Goode: “What’s really existential is AI powering autonomous weapons, killing machines, that are actually being used in warfare. The climate catastrophe is a real thing that could be exacerbated by what these tech companies are building. Bosses are using AI as an excuse to get rid of their pesky workers. This machine-god narrative is, in my opinion, meant to distract us from these.”

>> On Page One of today’s NYT, David E. Sanger and Dustin Volz write that President Trump “has been at the forefront of the ‘what-me-worry?’ crowd, refusing to engage on how to balance the risks and rewards of A.I.”

>> Semafor’s Reed Albergotti says the AI-safety conversation is being “spread by a breathless media for whom mass extinction is — let’s face it — an incredibly fun story.”

>> CNN’s John Liu explores how all of this looks from China.

>> A new nationwide survey by Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center shows a country “continuing to embrace AI, reaping tangible benefits, yet feeling deeply anxious about the impact AI will have on what it means to be human in an AI-suffused future.”

…in more ways than one.

As viewers know, there were some tweaks around the edges last night, but no wholesale overhaul or ideological shift. The Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton version of the newsmag “looked a lot like the show viewers have come to expect,” the NYT’s Michael M. Grynbaum and Ben Mullin wrote afterward.

“And for those wondering how the new season would treat President Trump,” they wrote, “the program referred to the war in Iran as ‘costly and unpopular,’ and said he had pardoned ‘a string of unrepentant financial con men,’ as well as ‘rioters’ at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

Variety’s Brian Steinberg concluded that the newsmag “put its best foot forward” on premiere night,” adding, “keep an eye on subsequent weeks…”

CNN’s Hanna Park writes: “Officials at the Kennedy Center warn it faces ‘certain fiscal collapse’ within weeks unless President Donald Trump’s name is added back to the building, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and The Washington Post.”

It appears likely that the center will close the doors to its main building “as early as Tuesday,” the Post’s Jonathan Edwards and Travis M. Andrews report.

The Trump-controlled board of trustees is slated to have a “special meeting” on Tuesday…

That’s the headline from LateNighter’s Jed Rosenzweig, who took a closer look at Brendan Carr’s response to the “equal time” fracas here. He said James Talarico is “banking on people not understanding the statute or operating as partisan lemmings” to get “clicks and donations.”

>> FYI: The weekend controversy about Ted Cruz’s appearance on ESPN’s “College GameDay” is not really related, since ESPN is on cable, not broadcast, and since Cruz is not running for reelection right now. The Athletic’s Justin Williams and Stewart Mandel have the backstory about Cruz (and all the booing) here.

First in Reliable Sources: Danielle Rhoades Ha has left The New York Times after 16 years to join Emerson Collective as managing director of communications. The Laurene Powell Jobs-founded company also recently hired former “60 Minutes” producer Nichole Marks as executive producer of editorial.