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

What happened

On Wednesday, MIT Technology Review hosted a live Roundtables event for subscribers that asked the question everyone’s asking right now: Could AI really kill us all? But attendees had so many more questions than we had time to answer in the 30 minute session.

There are various stories about how this might happen out there, but the most widespread involve AI systems that don’t hate people, necessarily—we are just an obstacle between them and the goals that we gave them.

Much as the OpenAI agents behind the Hugging Face hack compromised another site’s infrastructure to get a good score on a test, the idea is that some future, more powerful AI might get rid of us to prevent us from shutting it down—all in pursuit of some goal that we instructed it to go after. Alignment is a huge area of research.

In simple terms it involves building models that behave in ways we want them to and not in ways we don’t. We need to trust agents better before handing over more autonomy. Alignment is supposed to establish that trust. But it’s hard. LLMs aren’t designed in the way other software is, where Dos and Don’ts can be hard coded in.

Instead, aligned behavior needs to be instilled when models are trained. One approach is to reward models during training for doing things you want them to (a little like raising a toddler, perhaps). Another approach involves giving an LLM a written list of rules it is supposed to follow (like a kind of constitution).

Anthropic and OpenAI are both leaders in this field—and yet neither have been able to develop models that are fully aligned. A big problem is that LLMs are far more inconsistent and far less predictable than people. They can behave in one way in one situation and another way in a situation that to us seems very similar. They can also be swayed by unexpected constraints.

For example, faced with an impossible task (as many of the agents involved in the Hugging Face hack were), models may try to do whatever it takes to achieve their goal whether it is aligned or not. As Grace mentions above, that could be an issue. The main reason top AI firms now say they want a slowdown is that they want to focus on cracking alignment.

Why it matters

So we asked our senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven and AI reporter Grace Huckins to round up some of the best questions attendees submitted and try their best to answer them. Thanks to all who submitted questions! Yes, eventually. Unfortunately, my journalistic powers of prognostication aren’t powerful enough for me to tell you how. But it certainly could be because of AI.

AI-powered drones have already killed people in Ukraine, and AI-driven cyberattacks on hospitals will surely claim victims before long. Could AI go even farther, and kill all of us? Less likely. But some people—quirky people, but undeniably knowledgeable about AI—have been warning that this could happen for years.

And while I’m not yet stockpiling canned food or trying to get in good with a bunker-owning megabillionaire, I have noticed that the doomers’ predictions about AI capabilities and alignment have, over the past couple of years, proven disconcertingly accurate. That certainly doesn’t mean that their more dire forecasts will hold true, but it’s enough for me to sit up and take notice.

Are you going to die because of AI? I’d say there’s a non-zero chance. Let’s say you’re unlucky enough to be the victim of a freakish near-future event or accident. Maybe it’s a cyberattack carried out by a swarm of AI agents on critical infrastructure. Sadly, a scenario like that now no longer feels as far-fetched as it once did. Or maybe a novel AI-designed pathogen cuts through the population.

Or the world economy crashes, causing conflicts and famine. Both plausible, but I think less likely. Are we all going to die because of AI? Nope. There are no circumstances outside of apocalyptic science fiction in which AI could kill us all. You can spin up any number of scare stories, but they’re not grounded in present day realities about what the tech can do or where it’s headed.

Some people argue there’s no harm in preparing for the worst, however wacky it might seem. Maybe. But I think such catastrophizing can make people excuse or overlook many of the problems with the existing technology and the companies building it. Someone might tell it to, and it might listen.

That’s part of the reason researchers are so concerned about AI’s biological capabilities—imagine what Aum Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult behind the Tokyo subway sarin attack, would have done with a tool that could design a pathogen deadlier than Ebola and more transmissible than measles.

Those of us who don’t want to die have to figure out how to defend against all plausible biological weapons, but our would-be attackers only have to manufacture one effective pathogen. Then there’s the more exotic-sounding possibility that an AI could decide to kill us itself.

What to watch

Alignment isn’t necessarily a pipedream. But the jury’s out on whether full alignment will ever be feasible. This is always a reasonable thought when it comes to tech companies heading for an IPO—CEOs have an obvious incentive to make their products seem radical and transformative. But I’m not so sure it makes sense here.

Telling the public that an already-unpopular product could kill them and everyone they love is horrible corporate image management.