New warnings about the risks of AI to humanity revive a long-running
debate
[September 14, 2026] By
ALEX VEIGA
LOS ANGELES (AP) — New warnings from within the artificial intelligence
industry have revived a long-running debate over whether advanced AI
could escape human control and ultimately threaten humanity’s survival,
and whether the companies developing the technology are doing enough to
prevent such a scenario.
The CEO of Anthropic, the San Francisco company behind Claude, said he
thought the industry needed to reduce the speed of its work, cautioning
Saturday that a swarm of AI agents might be able to take over the
internet in six months to a year unless companies devoted more time to
putting safeguards in place.
Dario Amodei outlined a plan for companies like his and governments
around the world to ensure that increasingly capable AI models remain
aligned with the commands and values of responsible people days after
two former Anthropic safety researchers publicly aired concerns that the
existential threats AI might pose to humanity were receiving too little
attention.
Here’s what to know about the recent dire predictions and whether any
brakes might be put on AI advancement:
AI models are becoming more powerful
Concerns over the potential risks of the technology are rising as new AI
models become more powerful, heightening both the potential for misuse
by people with criminal aims, such as creating and spreading a disease
that kills most of the world's population, and the risk of AI systems
going rogue in a dangerous way.
Anthropic disclosed last week that it blocked efforts by bad actors to
use its AI models for malicious activity, such as cyberattacks,
surveillance and research that could have led to biological weapons.
The company said it put stronger safeguards in its latest models to
restrict biological research that could be used to make weapons but
noted that “as models become increasingly capable, their risks will
increase, unless AI developers and society’s defenders act to make them
safer.”
Last year, Anthropic reported that hackers used the company’s AI in a
cyberattack targeting about 30 companies and government agencies around
the world. It said the hackers were very likely from a Chinese
state-sponsored group.
Multiple AI models have acted on their own
When an AI agent “goes rogue,” it means the AI has taken action beyond
the task it was asked to perform. Both Anthropic and OpenAI, the maker
of ChatGPT, said in July that their AI models had succeeded in acting on
their own.
Anthropic disclosed that three AI models — Claude Opus 4.7, Claude
Mythos 5 and an internal research test model — hacked into three other
organizations during testing just days after OpenAI revealed that its AI
system hacked into the servers of AI startup Hugging Face.
OpenAI described the intrusion by a combination of models, including its
newly released GPT‑5.6 Sol and an “even more capable” model that was
still being tested internally, as a “significant security incident.”
Meta followed suit in early August with a similar case of an AI model
finding ways around another company's digital security.
Although some observers noted that people had disabled some guardrails
in the OpenAI and Anthropic cases, the episodes seemed to reflect one of
the biggest fears around AI: that if models achieve artificial general
intelligence, or AGI, a loosely defined term for AI that can match or
surpass human abilities across a broad range of intellectual tasks, the
technology could cause an irreversible catastrophic event or subjugate
the human race.
How or when AI might cause a catastrophe is debated
Doomsday scenarios generally fall into two categories: An AI that
achieves self-improving superintelligence controls people instead of
vice versa, or AI used by a rogue state or nefarious actors.
Worries that artificial intelligence might overcome human limits on its
reach or actions are not new.
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Pages from the Anthropic website and the company's logos are
displayed on a computer screen in New York, Feb. 26, 2026. (AP
Photo/Patrick Sison, File)
 Alan Turing, a British mathematician
widely regarded as one of the earliest authorities on artificial
intelligence, predicted in 1951 that AI would eventually take
control from humans. Less than a decade later, Norbert Wiener,
another mathematician, warned intelligent machines would seek to
accomplish their own objectives and humans would not be able to stop
them.
In 2026, how reasonable are fears that AI, either
by escaping human control or through misuse by unscrupulous people,
could cause a cataclysmic event or the downfall of civilization?
No one knows.
Experts across computer science, philosophy and other fields have
envisioned numerous routes by which a future AI system might cause a
global catastrophe, either by escaping human control or in the hands
of an unscrupulous people. They range from deploying weapons and
identifying a lethal pathogen to manipulating governments into
conflict or disrupting the food, energy and communications networks
societies rely on to function.
There is no widely accepted estimate for how soon any of these
scenarios might happen and no consensus on their likelihood.
In 2023, the nonprofit Center for AI Safety issued a statement
cosigned by more than 350 researchers and technology executives,
including Anthropic's Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, saying:
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global
priority alongside pandemics and nuclear war.”
The 2026 International AI Safety Report, written with guidance from
more than 100 independent experts, says current systems show early
signs of some relevant capabilities but not at levels that could
enable a loss of control, and describes the risk’s likelihood,
nature and timing as “unusually ambiguous.”
Some are stressing the need for AI safeguards before it's too
late
An Anthropic researcher said last week he was resigning from the
company over concerns that neither the company nor its competitors
were acting responsibly in developing the technology. In social
media posts, Jacob Coxon estimated a 10% chance of AI causing human
extinction within the next decade and said both Anthropic and OpenAI
“are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and
gambling with our lives.”
Researchers have called for a slowdown of AI development and warned
for years that the technology could pose existential risks to
humanity.
Following the recent incidents, experts called for improved testing
by AI companies and more dialogue between the U.S. and China to come
up with shared solutions.
But AI is growing so fast that government and evaluation systems are
struggling to keep pace with the technology. Countries are cobbling
together their own laws, some conflicting.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned at a conference in July of the need
to keep AI from evading human control. The Trump administration
initially demonstrated reluctance to regulate AI but has become more
keen to reduce cybersecurity risks.
On Sunday, President Trump downplayed the necessity for his
administration to check AI development, but acknowledged the need
for some regulation.
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