Ross Douthat Delivers Dire AI Warning to Close Out 60 Minutes Debut: ‘The Clock is Ticking’

Ross Douthat used his 60 Minutes debut to deliver a stark warning about artificial intelligence, telling viewers humanity may have only a “narrow window” to get the technology under control as alarm spreads among some of the industry’s biggest names.

The former New York Times columnist and new CBS correspondent closed Sunday’s season premiere with the program’s “Last Minute” segment, declaring that “no story looms larger” than the rapid development of AI.

“I’m Ross Douthat, one of the new faces you’ll see on 60 Minutes. We’ll be chasing a lot of stories this season, but right now no story looms larger than the latest developments in artificial intelligence. An AI system solved a math problem in 88 hours that human beings have struggled with for almost 100 years. Other AI hacked into companies on their own, and this past week a researcher quit a major AI firm, warning that if artificial intelligence gets out of control, it could wipe out the human race,” Douthat said.

He then offered a much shorter timeline than the decades-long horizon often associated with debates over AI safety.

“You don’t have to believe that prophecy, but you should believe this: We may have a narrow window this year, not the next 10, to make artificial intelligence safe for humanity. That clock is ticking, and so is ours,” he added. “For almost 60 years, it has meant the same thing: journalism you can trust. Where we’re headed, we’re going to need it.”

The warning came after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for greater independent scrutiny on frontier AI development, arguing that the technology is advancing faster than safeguards can keep pace.

Amodei has proposed independent monitoring of advanced models alongside industry-wide and international regulation. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI founder Elon Musk both publicly backed elements of his call.

The debate exploded after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned that people inside leading AI companies believed that AI could wipe out humanity, that they were “genuinely frightened” and “genuinely concerned about the fate of humanity in the next two years.”

President Donald Trump, however, insisted on Sunday that “very negative forces” were exaggerating the dangers and has previously maintained the geopolitical stakes of pushing America’s advantage, saying last week that “if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position”.

Watch above via CBS.

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