Experts warn AI could kill us all — this is how an apocalyptic doomsday scenario could play out
A reported tour through the specific, technical pathways — infrastructure collapse, engineered pandemics, nuclear miscalculation — by which AI researchers believe rogue systems could end human civilization within the decade.
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These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”
These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.
An insider who left Anthropic frames AI's coming capabilities as an existential threat serious enough to prompt his resignation.
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Alarm bells are even being rung by those helming the technology, including OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Anthropic honcho Dario Amodei. This week a researcher who has worked at both those companies, Jacob Coxon, said he quit Anthropic to warn “AI can kill us all by the end of the decade… These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.” As AI hurtles toward Artificial General Intelligence, here’s how the rise of machines could potentially go about wiping us all out.
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Maybe we have one more year left, or something, until they get that good at making bioweapons… It would probably develop not just one bioweapon, but maybe a hundred different kinds and release them at the same time.
A MIT physicist puts a concrete one-year timeline on AI achieving bioweapon mastery and describes a simultaneous multi-pathogen release strategy.
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Given that we’re deploying AI in medical research and drug development, it has massive access to knowledge about our bodies and their vulnerabilities. Also think how easily a pathogen can escape a lab — for instance what may have happened with COVID-19. Then imagine that pathogen supercharged by AI. “We see AI getting better and better at making bioweapons,” Max Tegmark, an MIT physics professor and AI expert, told The Post. “Maybe we have one more year left, or something, until they get that good at making bioweapons… It would probably develop not just one bioweapon, but maybe a hundred different kinds and release them at the same time.”
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Nuclear weapons systems are well protected against the capabilities people have had for years and decades — not against superhuman AI hacking.
Aguirre draws a critical gap between nuclear defenses built for human-level threats and the entirely different challenge posed by superhuman AI.
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Hacking into US nuclear infrastructure — such as power plants or weapons of mass destruction — is another ready-made way AI could hasten the destruction of humanity. “Nuclear weapons systems are very well protected, but they’re well protected against the threats and the sort of capabilities people have had for years and decades, not against superhuman AI hacking,” Anthony Aguirre, CEO of Future of Life Institute, warned. A real-world example of how vulnerable nuclear facilities can be played out is evident with the case of Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm uncovered in 2010.
Nuclear weapons systems are very well protected but they’re well protected against the threats and the sort of capabilities people have had for years and decades — not against superhuman AI hacking.
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These things know everything and they understand nothing.
A novelist's quip captures the paradox that vast AI knowledge without human judgment could cause lethal mistakes through sheer incomprehension.
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“AI will have no trouble making money – whether it’s through financial trading or doing services for people. It can impersonate a human and hire people or blackmail them to carry out physical ops … such as smuggling a USB thumb drive which can then infect computers on a localized network.” Even if it didn’t have devious intentions, AI could still kill people, even inadvertently. “I worry about AI having no common sense,” said Gary Rivlin, author of “AI Valley” told The Post. “Then it somehow, stupidly, drains off all the water because it doesn’t understand what a human would understand. These things know everything and they understand nothing.” Bioweapons
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If AI wants humans gone, we're gone. Your bunker's not gonna save you.
Aguirre dismisses elite survival plans as futile, arguing no physical refuge offers protection if AI decides to eliminate humanity.
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Can the tech bros escape? Mark Zuckerberg has built a bunker in Hawaii and Peter Thiel bought a massive remote farm in New Zealand. But the experts who spoke with The Post unanimously agreed: its “almost childish,” as Russell put it, to think there will be any saving oneself from nightmare possibilities if they unfold. “If AI wants humans gone, we’re gone. Your bunker’s not gonna save you,” Aguirre said. How can we get out of this? If AI continues to develop at its current rate and decides to eliminate humans the “best case” scenario would likely be shut down power grids, transportation networks and financial markets causing the death of thousands before humans intervene and stop it – not an…
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