Two things should make you consider what artificial intelligence could mean for humanity. One is that those working with the technology are warning about it leading to a catastrophe\u2014human extinction, even. The other is how technological innovation is aggravating the destruction of Ukraine. These things offer conflicting lessons for whether\u00a0AI<\/small>\u2019s rapid progress can or should be slowed down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For years, leading AI<\/small> bosses have signalled that their technology could become lethal. Bots may become brainy enough to outwit their creators before they are \u201caligned\u201d with humanity\u2019s goals and ethics. Bad people could use AI<\/small> to wreak havoc. These warnings have become more credible as AI<\/small> agents have escaped their sandboxes during testing, co-ordinated with one another and hacked organisations, including an AI<\/small> lab itself. Anthropic, one model-maker, has caught people using its models for malign ends, from Mali\u2019s intelligence services getting a mass-surveillance system built, to Houthi rebels in Yemen thought to be writing software for ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the recent resignation of a researcher at Anthropic, public fear of\u00a0AI\u00a0<\/small>doom has spread. In a post viewed more than 170m times, he said that it and OpenAI<\/small>\u00a0were \u201cgambling with our lives\u201d.\u00a0AI\u00a0<\/small>is rapidly growing more potent, for good and ill. In May prediction markets priced a less-than-one-third chance of\u00a0AI\u00a0<\/small>solving any millennium prize maths problem before 2030; on September 8th OpenAI<\/small>\u00a0said it had solved one of them,\u00a0causing angst among mathematicians<\/a>. On September 12th Sam Altman and Elon Musk, two\u00a0AI\u00a0<\/small>titans, endorsed a call by Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, to \u201cpace the frontier\u201d, ie, to slow\u00a0AI<\/small>\u2019s progress.<\/small>\u00a0Those\u00a0in favour of a slowdown<\/a>\u00a0include Bernie Sanders, a left-wing senator, and Steve Bannon, a right-wing populist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> Can the AI arms race be stopped?https:\/\/t.co\/iuG0rZA8CW<\/a><\/p>— H\u00e9ctor Dedrick Guerrero (@hectordguerrero) September 17, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote>