How Existential Fears Are Shaping the Debate over AI

Are We Losing Control of AI? What’s Driving New Fears

For years, as artificial intelligence has evolved from the stuff of sci-fi movies to an app ordinary people have installed on their phones, tech leaders and some AI insiders have talked about the potential for it to escape human control and wreak havoc on society. Those fears have become impossible to ignore in recent weeks, driven by advances in the technology, a series of cybersecurity breaches involving AI agents, and new warnings from rank-and-file AI staffers.

How existential fears are shaping the debate over AI

The current round of panic over artificial intelligence is based on the conviction that the technology has slipped out of human control to do its own bidding in several recent incidents. To some disillusioned AI researchers — and some senior…

Philp: Should we fear artificial intelligence?

In recent months, public discussion about artificial intelligence has increasingly been shaped by warnings of catastrophe. Activists, technology executives, and scientists have argued that governments may have little time to act before increasingly capable AI systems become impossible to control. Just how credible are these claims?