On Wednesday’s The View, Sen. Ted Cruz was asked what Congress would do about AI that researchers say could kill people this decade. The spark was a warning from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who quit his job and said that the people building the technology “earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Cruz said that reminded him of a March 2025 interview he did with Elon Musk on his podcast, Verdict, recorded at the White House with co-host Ben Ferguson. The episode ranged from DOGE and Tesla to what Cruz later called “killer robots.”
On the show, Cruz asked Musk what the odds were that AI destroys humanity. Musk said 10% to 20%. Cruz’s reaction, then and again on The View: “Holy crap.”
The original exchange was sharper. Cruz asked if “Skynet” was real and how serious the chance was of “killer robots annihilating humanity.” Musk answered, “20% likely. Maybe 10%,” and put the timeline at five to 10 years. He immediately flipped the frame: the glass was 80–90% full, there was an 80% chance of “extreme prosperity for all,” and there would be billions of humanoid robots. If there were going to be killer robots, he added, he’d rather they be American than Chinese.
Alyssa Farah Griffin used the new researcher warnings to press Cruz on what the Senate would actually do. Cruz pointed back to that Musk number — and to how little time Musk said the world might have.
