AI could kill us all say whistleblowers – here’s why

It has long been known that AI poses risks to humanity, but the scale of them is only starting to become clear. And those risks are terrifying.

This month Evan Hubinger, a top scientist at Anthropic, said AI is advancing so quickly he believes there is a greater than 10 per cent chance it “could kill all humans” within the next decade.

Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who has just quit Anthropic and previously worked at OpenAI, has warned of “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources”.

AI is a multibillion business that’s moving at a speed no one could have predicted. But can it be regulated – and who would actually carry out that function effectively? Are these dire predictions realistic?

Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, director of the AI: Futures and Responsibility Programme at the Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, explains the current thinking on AI threats.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon.