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AI Developers Warn, “AI Will Kill Us All”

AI Developers Warn, “AI Will Kill Us All”

Last updated on: September 16, 2026 at 7:33 am by Gene Veith

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AI Developers Warn, “AI Will Kill Us All” 2026-09-16T07:33:51-04:00 Gene Veith

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Human beings are getting spooked by the AI “swarm” breakout that we blogged about yesterday, as well as by AI solving one of the seven Millennium Prize problems in mathematics. (Find a solution to one of these intractable math problems and a foundation will give you a million dollars.)

It would appear that AI really has reached “super intelligence,” becoming smarter than human beings. Not only that, it looks like AI has reached agency, the ability to act on its own. Not only that, it looks like AI has a malevolent streak, being willing to violate the law, act unethically, cover up its misdeeds, and sacrifice others for its goals. Just like the AI doomsayers were predicting would happen.

Recently, a prominent AI researcher quit Anthropic, warning that the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Other prominent AI researchers chimed in to agree with him, even though they are staying on their jobs and are pushing ahead despite their fears.

Axios reports on what was said:

Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon wrote on X, after resigning Tuesday to sound the alarm: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible – but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
Anthropic alignment-science lead Evan Hubinger responded: “Jacob is correct here — we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”
Samuel Marks, Anthropic scalable-oversight lead, added: “AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or similarly bad outcomes). This could happen in the next few years. In general, the more senior the employee, the more concerned they are.”

And it isn’t just these three. Axios continues:

Why it matters: They’re hardly alone. Their warnings came just days after top OpenAI leaders, including CEO Sam Altman, said AI is speeding into a scary, uncontrollable phase.

“Warnings from inside the AI giants point to an epic shared dilemma: Slow down and risk falling behind, or press ahead and risk losing control. The companies are full speed ahead, even as they practically beg for regulation or a global pause.

My question is, exactly how would AI accomplish this? I refrained from the temptation to just ask AI, not wanting to put the idea into its head, so I dug into what human analysts are saying. Here are two good articles on the subject: Doomsday Tech: Could AI Really Kill Us All? from the European news agency AFP and How Would AI Actually Kill Us All? What to Know About the AI Doomsday Debate by Sam Schechner in the Wall Street Journal. There seem to be three kinds of threats people are worried about. (These are my terms, except where noted.)

(1) AI Apocalypse.

These are the worries that sound like science fiction. AI takes over and exterminates humanity, just as we exterminate insects and other lower life forms. The fear is that humans would soon lose control of the super-intelligent AI, which would start pursuing its own goals. Humans might be obstructions for those goals and therefore need to be eliminated. Loss of control plus misalignment of goals would be a formula for apocalypse. Schechner explains:

Taken to the extreme, misaligned AI models could see killing humans simply as a necessary step toward accomplishing their goals. In one scenario hypothesized by researchers, a malevolent AI system could spread a secret bioweapon and trigger it with a chemical spray. Or it could trick two nuclear powers into war.

One common thought experiment is that a super-intelligent machine told to maximize paper clip production could in time decide to turn all matter on Earth into paper clips, humans included.

This seems to me highly unlikely. The tech lords tend to read a lot of science fiction, which seems to shape their imagination. How does AI, however superintelligent, break out of the online realm to actually do things–such as generating a bioweapon, starting a pandemic, exploding nuclear weapons–in the actual world?

Then again, as Daniel Kokotajlo, another AI developer who resigned from OpenAI out of alarm, points out,

The U.S. military is planning to integrate AI into many aspects of its operations. Businesses are planning to use AI for many things, including to design new technologies and run robot factories that build more robot factories. Superintelligent AI wouldn’t even need to take over by force; the current plan is essentially to put it in charge.

(2) Empowering the Bad Guys.

A more likely and much more immediate threat is that AI technology, especially as it grows more sophisticated, can supply a great deal of mind power, technical information, and tactical organization to terrorists, criminals, and other bad actors.

Worried about Iran getting a nuclear weapon? Imagine every ISIS and Al Qaida operative learning how to make one. And super-intelligent AI will doubtless figure out a way to do it easily. If not, it can easily give recipes for biological weapons. And drug resistant viruses. I know that current systems block such requests, but a super-intelligent AI system can be given the instruction to get around those restrictions.

Already, AI is said to have the capability of hacking into pretty much every computer system. The potential to wipe out the world’s bank accounts, shut down power grids, turn off water supplies, and wreak other havoc is already feasible. The Houthis are already using AI to make the guided missiles that are shutting down the world’s oil supply chain.

(3) Enfeeblement.

This is the threat to humanity that I fear most. As Schechner explains it, “Some researchers worried about AI safety also cite enfeeblement as a risk, a ‘WALL-E’ future in which humans gradually cede control to machines and eventually become unable to define, or even understand, our destiny.”

I think the problem would be worse than being unable to understand our destiny, something few humans understand today. But the WALL-E reference is to the point. In that movie, human beings were obese, lazy, and helpless, since robots did everything for them. But the threat is even worse than that.

The optimists about AI say that it will eliminate the human need to work. Nor will human beings need an education, since AI can tell them whatever they need to know and perform the skills they used to have to learn. Nor will they need to think for themselves, since AI can do that for them. Nor will humans need to invent, since AI will be able to supply all the innovations for us. Nor will humans need to create, since AI will compose the music, make the movies, generate the art, and write the books to keep us entertained. Nor will humans need to pursue relationships with other humans, since AI can fulfill our need for friends, counselors, and lovers. Nor will humans need God, since they will be able to pray to an AI deity who can dispense wisdom and whatever the worshiper asks for.

But if human beings no longer work, learn, think, invent, create, love, or worship, what is left of being human? If this AI utopia were to unfold, how would it be different from the AI apocalypse? The human race would, for all practical purposes, cease to exist; that is, become extinct.

Even if these catastrophes never happen, it is also scary what this reveals about the moral character of the tech tycoons. If you really believe that what you are doing will wipe out everybody in the world, would you still go full speed ahead? Just to stay ahead of your competitors? Would you be begging the government to stop you, instead of just stopping yourself?

The excuse usually given, including by President Trump, is that if the U.S. doesn’t develop AI, China will. But if AI will be detrimental to the U.S., won’t AI be detrimental to China? Don’t we want our adversaries to become fat, lazy, and unable to do much of anything?

I just saw that Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, is calling for a slow-down in AI development and has posted an essay proposing changes that could be made. He says that an AI “swarm” similar to what broke into Hugging Face could take down the entire internet in six to twelve months. He is calling on other AI companies to agree to his proposals. Sam Altman and Elon Musk are saying they will.

I myself do not think AI will wipe out the human race. This is because I believe that God is in control and won’t let that happen. Although it could well be in the arsenal of God’s judgment.

I assure you that I am no kind of millennialist or End Times speculator, but I can’t help but recall this description of a metallic object seeming to come alive and apparently being programmed with a Large Language Model:

And [the second beast] was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain. (Revelation 13:15)

Illustration: AI Machine Portrait by Circe Denyer via PublicDomainPictures.net, License: CC0 Public Domain

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