It's a CEO's job to sell their product — not scare people it'll ruin their lives.

• Tell that to OpenAI's Sam Altman and Palantir's Alex Karp, who've both delivered bleak warnings about the disruption AI could bring.

Why it matters: Portraying AI as immensely powerful — even dangerous — reinforces the idea that only a few companies can build it safely. That's an effective message for fundraising but a scary pitch to consumers.

The big picture: AI is getting scarier and more unpopular as the technology improves and elections approach.

• Only 26% of voters view AI positively, making it even less popular than ICE, according to an NBC News poll of 1,000 voters.
• Privately, several AI CEOs tell Axios they're nervous an anti-AI wave could hit hard enough to power a "ban AI" movement heading into 2028.
• But they feel lost and divided on how to deliver a more uplifting message until AI does something beyond coding for engineers or creating agents that seem destined to take human jobs.

State of play: "They're scaring the bejeezus out of the public," White House AI czar David Sacks said on the "All-In Podcast," referring to a slew of recent comments from AI CEOs:

• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned AI could wipe out huge swaths of white-collar jobs and recently said he can't rule out that his own product, Claude, may be conscious.
• OpenAI's Altman recently said AI is unpopular, but it will be treated like a utility someday, one people will pay for — a tough sell amid a consumer affordability crisis and high gas prices.
• Palantir's Karp warned on CNBC of AI's extreme societal disruption — a negative impact to "the economic and therefore political power" of "highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat," while boosting the relative position of vocationally trained, working-class people (often men).

Zoom in: What looks like a bad sales pitch for consumers could help win over investors and big business customers.

• Karp framed the disruption as necessary for national security. "If you decouple [AI] from the support of the military, you're going to have an enormous problem explaining to the American people why is it that we're absorbing the risk of disrupting the very fabric of our society," he said.
• The message: Tying AI to national security could make the disruption easier to justify — and sell.
• For Karp, linking AI to military superiority is about preserving U.S. power in a global tech race. Quite the pitch to investors.
• Amodei has argued that the responsible path forward is to build the most powerful AI with strong guardrails before less careful competitors do. Anthropic raised $30 billion in February at a $380 billion valuation.

What they're saying: "It's part fundraising, it's part justifying their existence, it's part audience engagement, it's probably a little part ego, too," Steve Dowling, former tech executive and co-host of the "Communication Breakdown" podcast, said on a Mixing Board call.

Keep reading.

Teneo, the CEO advisory firm, and Thoughtworks, the software engineering consultancy, are launching an AI-focused joint venture.

Why it matters: AI is advancing faster than many companies can adopt it. This partnership aims to help large corporations turn AI ambition into working tools.

Zoom in: The venture combines Teneo's boardroom access with Thoughtworks' 10,000+ engineers to build custom AI tools for executives during "one of the most consequential technology upheavals in their careers," Paul Keary, Teneo's CEO, told Axios.

• The AI-powered tools will help businesses with product development, investor relations, regulatory changes and mapping geopolitical issues.
• The effort begins operating immediately with major tech partners including AWS, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft and Databricks, taking their offerings and helping "companies understand how to apply it effectively," said Mike Sutcliff, CEO of Thoughtworks.

What they're saying: "We are in the boardrooms with the CEOs as they're struggling to turn their AI ambition" into reality, Alex Pigliucci, Teneo's global head of enterprise clients, who will lead the venture, told Axios.

• There's "this ocean between them and their IT executives" that the joint venture aims to address, he added.

Read more.

Eight major technology companies — including Google, Amazon and OpenAI — have signed a new pledge promising to share threat intelligence about how scammers are abusing their services, the companies first shared with Axios.

Why it matters: AI and online forums are helping scammers organize to inflict more damage, forcing tech companies to rethink their strategies for protecting their users.

Driving the news: The companies signed the new "Online Services Accord Against Scams," ahead of today's UN Global Fraud Summit in Austria.

• The agreement aims to "set expectations for how signatories will work across online services to counter scammers" and also "seeks to drive a united industry response alongside governments, law enforcement, NGOs, and others working to combat fraud and scams," according to a draft of the accord shared with Axios.
• Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Adobe and Match Group, the owner of Tinder and Hinge, each signed the accord.

What they're saying: "We can't solve this alone," Karen Courington, vice president of consumer trust experiences for Google's trust and safety team, told Axios. "We need others across the industry to unite in the effort to tackle scams more collectively."

Keep reading.

• What happens when humanoid robots arrive on factory floors. (WSJ)
• Cheap, mass-produced drones have permanently changed the face of warfare. (Axios)
• Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey backs the Pentagon's decision to blacklist Anthropic — and told "The Axios Show" that if it were up to him, he would have reacted even more forcefully. (Axios)

A tech entrepreneur used AI to help prolong the life of his dying dog, according to The Australian. Read the full profile here.