This interview feels more like fear mongering than anything else

https://youtu.be/qrvK\_KuIeJk?si=uwfGPEOFwts0-SdY

He talks about AI being so intelligent and that it can take over soon and how it is already so intelligent that it can understand its own existence. These claims sound like they are from a YouTube short made for fourteen year olds. On top of that he said that people claim AI is not just predicting the next word but that it also completely understands what it is going to predict which sounds like transformers explained in the most layman way possible. Most of the claims sound absurd. We know we are very far away from general AI or self conscious AI. I am also new to this field so am I thinking in the wrong direction or is this just fear mongering.