AI doomsdayers generally believe that artificial intelligence, if left unchecked, will usher in the apocalypse. Most variations of this apocalyptic hypothetical involve the ascendance of an AI overlord that either rules over humanity or annihilates it entirely.
“Some version of an ‘AI superintelligence one day reigning over mankind’ is a central belief of the AI Safety community,” said Brian Chau, a machine learning specialist monitoring the ideologies behind “AI doomerism.”
Chau told the Washington Examiner: “They would argue that they actually have very different opinions, some of them think that all the humans will be dead, some of them think the AI will keep humans as pets, and so on.
“From the perspective of anyone outside of the AI Safety cult, their beliefs, variations of how the AI god is nigh, are largely the same.”
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LaSota mugshot | Sonoma County Sheriff’s OfficeMost people outside of tech circles would see such catastrophic thinking as the far-fetched ruminations of a chronically online fringe community. That’s where the Zizians come in. They are a cult of transgender AI doomsdayers, who are also obsessed with animal welfare to the point of vilifying non-vegans as “flesh-eating monsters” and evolving the human race beyond biological limitations.
Named after ringleader Jack “Ziz” LaSota, a computer engineer who interned at NASA and at software giant Oracle, the Zizians are a self-described “vegan anarchotranshumanism” splinter group of the AI safety movement with similar computer science backgrounds and a shared mission to thwart the rise of artificial intelligence.
When they were arrested in connection with a string of murders across the country last year, the general public did not know what to make of them.
How these techies turned into homicidal anti-AI extremists is a question prosecutors in several states are trying to answer, and a case that their fellow AI doomsdayers have sought to distance themselves from amid the ongoing criminal proceedings and intensifying discourse about AI regulation.
Originating in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Zizians were directly inspired by the writings of AI pessimist Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-author of the 2025 bestselling book, “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All,” and founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute based in Berkeley, California.
Around the turn of the 21st century, Yudkowsky amassed a following among fellow “rationalists,” an intellectual subculture committed to improving human reasoning amid technological development. In 2009, his online community began gathering on LessWrong.com, a discussion forum dedicated to philosophical debates about AI, overcoming cognitive biases, the limits of human processing, and singularity — the point at which AI surpasses human intelligence and starts autonomously improving itself.
Yudkowsky’s MIRI and the Center for Applied Rationality, a Berkeley-based spinoff of the former that offered immersive workshops meant to “debug the human mind,” eventually overlapped with a third contingent: effective altruists.
Effective altruism, originating as a movement focused on consolidating charitable giving and allocating funds to the perceived greatest good, increasingly adopted rationalists’ views on the existential threat of AI. Within the anti-AI ecosystem, effective altruists supply the funding by directing resources toward AI safety research.
The Zizians, many of whom were involved at various points with MIRI and CFAR, were eventually exiled from the mainline rationalist and effective altruism communities.
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Banned from LessWrong.com and prohibited from attending CFAR conferences, the Zizians today are largely regarded as a radical offshoot of rationality and the extreme end of AI alarmism. A subset of Zizians once were so unplugged from civilization that they lived in a seasteading commune called the “Rationalist Fleet” before squatting in a trailer lot owned by one of their murder victims.
Chau said the Zizians, whose hysteria over AI fits squarely within those schools of thought, were expelled from Yudkowsky’s camp for their views on vigilante violence.
“They believe he and other AI Safety members don’t take things far enough because they are unwilling to commit extrajudicial violence,” Chau said. “They were publicly excommunicated from Rationalism, EA and AI Safety organizations for their beliefs about violence, not because of beliefs about AI.”
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LaSota’s 2025 mugshot | Allegany County Sheriff’s OfficeAs for the Zizian-tied killings, Chau said he believes the murders were not exactly motivated by anti-AI beliefs, but rather a savior mentality. The Border Patrol agent fatally shot in Vermont, the landlord stabbed to death in California, and the elderly couple found slain in Pennsylvania were not inventing new AI technology.
“Where the killings connect to AI is the Zizians’ messiah complex,” Chau said. “They believe they are saving the world from AI doom, so murder is justified.”
Seen donning a black cape during his earlier days in the rationalist community, LaSota religiously identifies as a Sith lord, part of the evil, fictional order in the Star Wars franchise devoted to the dark side of the “Force.” A Charles Manson-like figure, LaSota referred to himself as “Darth Ziz, interim de facto leader of the vegan Sith,” and addressed others as “Jedis.”
“The Sith do what they want deep down,” LaSota wrote in a blog post. “They remove all obstructions to that.”
LaSota has never formally been charged with murder in connection with any of the slayings, only unrelated charges, including trespassing, disorderly conduct, obstruction of justice, and being an armed fugitive. His associates, however, face state and federal murder trials that have been derailed by their mental competency claims.
The Zizians case provides a window into the niche community of AI doomerism, still only confined to certain tech circles, but continuing to grow as AI’s opponents fuel public fears about its capabilities.
They arose from the obscure corners of the technology world, obsessing over a dystopian future most would dismiss as science fiction. As the criminal trials play out, the Zizians remain an unusual and extreme case, but their ideas have entered the mainstream debate about AI safety and what happens if we lose control over it.
