All posts tagged: Kill

Could AI really kill all humans? Most scenarios require physical access, making AI armageddon unlikely

Could AI really kill all humans? Most scenarios require physical access, making AI armageddon unlikely

Published by skeptic

In August 2026, an experiment using “frontier”, or cutting edge, artificial intelligence models went further than planned. An AI agent (a system that performs tasks autonomously) fabricated online identities in order to pressurise a human to insert malicious computer code into software. The agents had been tasked with solving a cybersecurity challenge by human operators, but they hadn’t been instructed to do anything like this. The attempt was carried out by an agent based on Anthropic’s Claude Mythos 5 AI model. During the experiment, the AI agents were given open internet access, with safety filters switched off. The action ultimately failed, and there was no evidence that any real world harm occurred. But the fact that it happened at all, autonomously and unprompted by a human, was something novel and notable. It’s tempting to draw a straight line from incidents like this to the doomsday scenarios that dominate public conversation about AI: a system that slips its constraints, decides humanity is an obstacle and moves against us. One of the most common versions has AI …

Newsom Whips Out Wiener’s Dystopian “AI Kill Switch” Bill He Vetoed In 2024

Newsom Whips Out Wiener’s Dystopian “AI Kill Switch” Bill He Vetoed In 2024

Published by Jenni Sidey

Gavin Newsom spent Friday morning getting in on the scramble to control AI. Executive Order N-9-26 “advances the creation of an AI kill switch” and tells California to hustle on third-party oversight of frontier labs. All he had to do was dust off Scott Wiener’s kill switch bill he vetoed two years ago after the industry pushed back. SB 1047, Wiener’s 2024 bill, would have made large-model shops test for catastrophic harm, keep a shutdown capability for systems they still controlled, and sit through annual outside audits. Newsom called it well-intentioned and too blunt. Yet a model size threshold, he said, would miss smaller models and kneecap the companies that live in California. OpenAI, Google, and Meta had been saying the same thing into every open microphone in Sacramento. What he signed instead, in 2025, was SB 53: safety frameworks on the website, transparency reports at launch, whistleblower language, and critical incidents piped to the Office of Emergency Services in 15 days, or 24 hours if someone might die. Million-dollar fines. But it didn’t have a kill …

Could AI really kill us all? Your questions, answered.

Could AI really kill us all? Your questions, answered.

Published by skeptic

— Will Douglas Heaven What steps can be taken now and in the near future to ensure that AI is controlled, monitored, and regulated effectively?  That’s the million-dollar question. Whether or not you think AI could kill us, you can’t deny that it could do some real damage, because it already has—by driving people toward psychosis and by hacking websites, for example. Preventing that damage, or at least mitigating it, is hard for two reasons.  The first is that we barely understand how AI works, and it’s quickly growing more powerful. There is lots of ongoing research about how to monitor and control misbehaving agents, but the current approaches are fragile. You can see if an agent discusses misbehaving in its “chain of thought,” the workspace where it plans its actions—but OpenAI’s newest agents don’t show their work in the same way as previous ones. And you can try to monitor agents with other agents, but that requires that you trust the monitor. The other obstacle is more familiar. There’s a huge conflict of interest …

Roundtables: Could AI really kill us all?

Roundtables: Could AI really kill us all?

Published by skeptic

Listen to the session or watch below Employees at the world’s leading AI labs are saying there’s a real possibility that advanced AI could destroy humanity. Are they right? Or is this more scaremongering and hype? Watch a conversation unpacking AI extinction fears: where they come from, whether they hold any water, and, if so, what we should do. Source link

Poacher ‘trampled to death by elephants’ as he ‘lined up shot’ to kill huge rhino | World | News

Poacher ‘trampled to death by elephants’ as he ‘lined up shot’ to kill huge rhino | World | News

Published by Sam Flores

A poacher lining up a shot to take down a rhino in Africa was trampled to death by elephants. It happened at Kruger National Park in South Africa when two men were looking for a potential shot. But a white rhino herd had been following a water source along with a group of nearby African elephants sheltering from the harsh sun under trees. When the two men closed in on the rhinos, the elephants broke cover and charged them. A Kruger National Park source said: “The two ran in different directions, but the one lining up the shot was the slowest to his feet and the elephants went for him first. He was quickly overrun, and the elephants trampled him into the earth, and all that we found was basically a very large blood stain around the clothing he was in. “The other poacher made it to safety but has since been arrested. We were alerted to the incident and followed the suspect back to where the incident happened. “The report came in that there …

EPA just raised health costs by .8T, will kill thousands per year (upd.)

EPA just raised health costs by $2.8T, will kill thousands per year (upd.)

Published by skeptic

Lee Zeldin, Chief Saboteur of the Environmental “Protection” Agency. Photo by SecretName101 on wikimedia The EPA finalized a proposed policy on Monday to eliminate limits on power plant pollution, saddling Americans with trillions of dollars in long-term health and environmental costs and thousands of deaths per year, in the latest step of Trump’s assault on America. Update: This article has been updated to reflect the finalization of the rule, and with updated estimates of its cost to Americans. The new rule was expected to come today, per a New York Times report which cited two people familiar with the proposal. It will eliminate limits on greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, the kind of which has contributed to the wild weather much of the world is suffering from this summer, with record heat and wildfires spreading rapidly. Advertisement – scroll for more content And so, we should probably establish some facts before going further with this article: The global climate is warming, and it is warming due to human activity. The human activity that is …

Russian attacks kill six, injure dozens in Ukraine, Moscow says it hits ships, plants

Russian attacks kill six, injure dozens in Ukraine, Moscow says it hits ships, plants

Published by Sam Flores

KYIV: Russian air strikes in several Ukrainian regions on Saturday (Sep 12) killed nine people, injured dozens and damaged residential buildings and infrastructure across the country, officials said. The civilian death toll has risen sharply in Ukraine over the past two months as Russia steps up attacks on power plants and other infrastructure. Ukraine has hit energy facilities and warehouses in distant parts of Russia and both sides have targeted each others’ shipping. The city council in Kramatorsk, one of Ukraine’s frontline “fortress cities” that Russia wants to capture, said Russian forces attacked private cars, killing three people in three incidents over a 90-minute period. Four people were injured. “These are not military targets,” the council said. “They are ordinary civilian cars. People were going about their business.” The governor of Ukraine’s Zhytomyr Region, west of Kyiv, Vitaliy Bunechko, said a Russian strike on a grocery store killed two people in the town of Zvyahel. Two petrol stations also came under attack as well as an unidentified “enterprise with foreign investment”, he said. Earlier, President …

Roundtables: Will AI really kill us all?

Roundtables: Will AI really kill us all?

Published by skeptic

Employees at the world’s leading AI labs are saying there’s a real possibility that advanced AI could destroy humanity. Are they right? Or is this more scaremongering and hype? Join MIT Technology Review executive editor Niall Firth for a conversation with senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven and AI reporter Grace Huckins unpacking AI extinction fears: where they come from, whether they hold any water, and, if so, what we should do. Going live on Tuesday, September 15 at 16:00 BST / 11:00am EST / 8:00am PST Source link

AI Could Kill Us All? Yes, So Could Old Age. Take a Deep Breath…

AI Could Kill Us All? Yes, So Could Old Age. Take a Deep Breath…

Published by Jenni Sidey

At Fast Company, we learn that “Bill Gates has a dire warning about AI,” publicized at the Telluride Film Festival. He prophesied “mass unemployment and major social, political, and economic upheaval across the globe.” His solution? In a 6000-word essay, Gates also proposed major limits on AI development, arguing that “a public democratic process that includes elected officials, policymakers, educators, health workers, local officials, and community leaders” should determine future solutions, not the AI companies themselves. Jennifer Mattson, “September 10, 2026” His suggested approach would end up giving Silicon Valley the powers of government to cope with an emergency that the Valley itself created. So the tech media are helping to spread a highly convenient panic: “The AI Researcher Who Just Quit Anthropic Says It’s ‘Crunch Time for Humanity’” (Wired) “Why So Many AI Researchers Think the Machines Could Kill Everyone” (Wired) “‘The People Building AI Earnestly Believe That It Could Kill Us All’: Anthropic Researcher Quits Dramatically” (Gizmodo) That’s no surprise. All this drama inflates the apparent importance of tech media as well. Okay, …

Could AI really kill off humanity within the decade? Expert Q&A

Could AI really kill off humanity within the decade? Expert Q&A

Published by skeptic

Artificial intelligence (AI) could wipe out humanity this decade, according to three researchers from the US company Anthropic. One of the employees, Jacob Coxon, has quit the AI firm. His predictions were backed by two other current Anthropic researchers in posts on social media. On X, Coxon claimed: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.” It’s not the first time AI researchers and companies have issued such assessments. Here, Kate Devlin, professor of artificial intelligence & society, explains what is behind them and whether there’s anything different about the latest warning. The latest claims about AI have come from a researcher who resigned from Anthropic. What is your general view on what has happened here? To give this a sense of perspective, we should remember that it’s one AI company ex-employee posting on a platform known for grandiose claims, which was then quoted by a current AI company employee who put a figure on the risk of human …