{"id":80260,"topic":"ai","source":"WAKA 8","title":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence - WAKA 8","url":"https://www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","url_hash":"d9a895f3d12912b66cb5ed1b72a8a2b2a08ba3e8","author":"","summary":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence WAKA 8","content":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction.\nArtificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself. But some people working inside the world’s leading AI companies say that possibility should be taken seriously.\nThe latest warning came from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who worked at both OpenAI and\nAnthropic. Coxon recently left Anthropic and warned publicly about the race to build what\nresearchers call superintelligence, artificial intelligence that could outperform humans across\nnearly every important intellectual task.\nCoxon has said that some people inside the companies developing the most advanced AI\nsystems genuinely believe those systems could eventually threaten humanity, possibly even\nbefore the end of this decade.\nThat does not mean scientists have concluded that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030.\nFar from it. But the concern is real enough that a number of prominent AI researchers believe the risk deserves much more attention.\nThe Fear Is Not Really About Robots\nWhen people hear warnings about artificial intelligence, they may picture humanoid robots\nturning against people. That is not really what researchers are talking about.\nThe concern is the intelligence controlling increasingly capable computer systems.\nRight now, most people use AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude by asking a question and\nreceiving an answer.\nBut AI is rapidly moving beyond that. Newer AI systems can operate as what are known as agents. Instead of answering a single question, an AI agent can be given a goal and then attempt to figure out how to accomplish it. Those capabilities are still imperfect. AI agents make mistakes, get confused and fail at tasks humans can easily complete.\nBut researchers are watching how quickly those abilities are improving.\nWhat Happens If AI Becomes Better at Building AI?\nOne of the biggest concerns involves AI becoming capable enough to help improve future AI\nsystems.\nThe theory goes like this.\nHumans build a more capable AI.\nThat AI helps researchers design an even more capable AI.\nThe newer system then helps create another, even more powerful version.\nIf that cycle accelerated, some researchers believe AI capabilities could increase much faster\nthan governments, regulators or even the companies creating the technology could respond.\nThis idea is sometimes called recursive self-improvement. It remains theoretical.\nWhy Would a Superintelligent AI Be Dangerous?\nThe concern does not require AI to become angry, evil, or even conscious.\nThe problem could simply be that an extremely powerful system is given a goal and pursues\nthat goal in ways humans did not intend.\nIn simple terms, can humans make sure that increasingly powerful AI systems continue doing\nwhat we actually want them to do?\nIf a future AI became capable of acting independently across computer networks, researchers\nworry it could potentially discover software vulnerabilities faster than humans could repair them.\nThat could put financial institutions, communications systems, power grids and other critical\ninfrastructure at risk.\nThere are also concerns about highly capable AI being used by humans for cyberattacks,\nweapons development or biological threats. In that scenario, the danger would not necessarily come from AI deciding to attack humanity. It could come from a person using AI as an extraordinarily powerful tool.\nWhy 2030?\nThere is nothing scientifically special about the year 2030. It is not a deadline established by researchers. The date comes from predictions about how quickly AI capabilities could improve over the next several years.\nSome people working in AI believe systems capable of outperforming humans in many areas\ncould arrive surprisingly soon. Others believe those predictions are far too aggressive.\nNo one knows. That uncertainty is one of the biggest problems in the debate.\nAI has already advanced faster than many experts expected in areas including language, image\ngeneration, computer programming and problem solving. Researchers who are concerned about existential risk argue that waiting until an extremely powerful system already exists could be too late to figure out how to control it.\nWhat Do AI Researchers Actually Believe?\nWarnings about human extinction are not the majority view among AI researchers.\nBut they are also not limited to a handful of people predicting doomsday.\nOne of the largest surveys of AI researchers asked 2,778 people who had published at major\nartificial intelligence conferences about the possibility of extremely bad outcomes from\nadvanced AI.\nThe median estimate was about a 5 percent chance that advanced AI could eventually cause\nhuman extinction or a similarly permanent loss of human control within the next century. The average estimate was higher.\nThat does not mean researchers believe extinction is likely. A 5 percent median means the typical researcher surveyed still believed the overwhelming likelihood was that such an outcome would not happen.\nBut consider the stakes. If engineers believed a new bridge had even a 5 percent chance of collapsing, nobody would say the risk was too small to worry about.\nThat is essentially the argument being made by AI safety researchers. Even a relatively small possibility of an outcome that catastrophic deserves attention.\nThe Bigger Problem: The Race\nThere is another reason the issue is so difficult. Artificial intelligence is not being developed in\nisolation. Governments see it as an economic and military advantage. The United States does not want another country to build the world’s most powerful AI first. China does not want the United\nStates to dominate the technology.\nThe fear among AI safety researchers is that even if one company or country decides to slow\ndevelopment in order to study the risks, another may continue. That could make international cooperation and regulation especially difficult.\nSo Is This a Credible Threat?\nThe most accurate answer is this: There is no scientific consensus that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030. There is not even a consensus that artificial intelligence will ever become powerful enough to\npose that kind of threat. But the possibility is considered credible enough that prominent researchers, including people working inside the companies building the most advanced AI systems, believe it should be treated seriously.\nSome think the risk may be decades away. Others believe it could arrive much sooner. Coxon is among those sounding the more urgent alarm. And that may be the most important part of this story.\nThe people issuing these warnings are not watching AI development from the outside. Some of\nthem are helping build it.","image_url":"https://www.waka.com/content/uploads/2026/09/n/c/wtt-ai-warning.png","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-09-11T12:51:00+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-09-11T14:15:03+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction. Artificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself.","cluster_id":null,"extract_retries":0,"extract_error":null,"contract_version":"news_item.v1","format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1","dedup_url":"https://www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277,"usable_text_length":6818,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277}},"news_item":{"id":80260,"canonical_url":"https://www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","source_url":"https://www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","title":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence - WAKA 8","source_name":"WAKA 8","author":null,"published_at":"2026-09-11T12:51:00+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"rss_summary":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence WAKA 8","full_text":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction.\nArtificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself. But some people working inside the world’s leading AI companies say that possibility should be taken seriously.\nThe latest warning came from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who worked at both OpenAI and\nAnthropic. Coxon recently left Anthropic and warned publicly about the race to build what\nresearchers call superintelligence, artificial intelligence that could outperform humans across\nnearly every important intellectual task.\nCoxon has said that some people inside the companies developing the most advanced AI\nsystems genuinely believe those systems could eventually threaten humanity, possibly even\nbefore the end of this decade.\nThat does not mean scientists have concluded that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030.\nFar from it. But the concern is real enough that a number of prominent AI researchers believe the risk deserves much more attention.\nThe Fear Is Not Really About Robots\nWhen people hear warnings about artificial intelligence, they may picture humanoid robots\nturning against people. That is not really what researchers are talking about.\nThe concern is the intelligence controlling increasingly capable computer systems.\nRight now, most people use AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude by asking a question and\nreceiving an answer.\nBut AI is rapidly moving beyond that. Newer AI systems can operate as what are known as agents. Instead of answering a single question, an AI agent can be given a goal and then attempt to figure out how to accomplish it. Those capabilities are still imperfect. AI agents make mistakes, get confused and fail at tasks humans can easily complete.\nBut researchers are watching how quickly those abilities are improving.\nWhat Happens If AI Becomes Better at Building AI?\nOne of the biggest concerns involves AI becoming capable enough to help improve future AI\nsystems.\nThe theory goes like this.\nHumans build a more capable AI.\nThat AI helps researchers design an even more capable AI.\nThe newer system then helps create another, even more powerful version.\nIf that cycle accelerated, some researchers believe AI capabilities could increase much faster\nthan governments, regulators or even the companies creating the technology could respond.\nThis idea is sometimes called recursive self-improvement. It remains theoretical.\nWhy Would a Superintelligent AI Be Dangerous?\nThe concern does not require AI to become angry, evil, or even conscious.\nThe problem could simply be that an extremely powerful system is given a goal and pursues\nthat goal in ways humans did not intend.\nIn simple terms, can humans make sure that increasingly powerful AI systems continue doing\nwhat we actually want them to do?\nIf a future AI became capable of acting independently across computer networks, researchers\nworry it could potentially discover software vulnerabilities faster than humans could repair them.\nThat could put financial institutions, communications systems, power grids and other critical\ninfrastructure at risk.\nThere are also concerns about highly capable AI being used by humans for cyberattacks,\nweapons development or biological threats. In that scenario, the danger would not necessarily come from AI deciding to attack humanity. It could come from a person using AI as an extraordinarily powerful tool.\nWhy 2030?\nThere is nothing scientifically special about the year 2030. It is not a deadline established by researchers. The date comes from predictions about how quickly AI capabilities could improve over the next several years.\nSome people working in AI believe systems capable of outperforming humans in many areas\ncould arrive surprisingly soon. Others believe those predictions are far too aggressive.\nNo one knows. That uncertainty is one of the biggest problems in the debate.\nAI has already advanced faster than many experts expected in areas including language, image\ngeneration, computer programming and problem solving. Researchers who are concerned about existential risk argue that waiting until an extremely powerful system already exists could be too late to figure out how to control it.\nWhat Do AI Researchers Actually Believe?\nWarnings about human extinction are not the majority view among AI researchers.\nBut they are also not limited to a handful of people predicting doomsday.\nOne of the largest surveys of AI researchers asked 2,778 people who had published at major\nartificial intelligence conferences about the possibility of extremely bad outcomes from\nadvanced AI.\nThe median estimate was about a 5 percent chance that advanced AI could eventually cause\nhuman extinction or a similarly permanent loss of human control within the next century. The average estimate was higher.\nThat does not mean researchers believe extinction is likely. A 5 percent median means the typical researcher surveyed still believed the overwhelming likelihood was that such an outcome would not happen.\nBut consider the stakes. If engineers believed a new bridge had even a 5 percent chance of collapsing, nobody would say the risk was too small to worry about.\nThat is essentially the argument being made by AI safety researchers. Even a relatively small possibility of an outcome that catastrophic deserves attention.\nThe Bigger Problem: The Race\nThere is another reason the issue is so difficult. Artificial intelligence is not being developed in\nisolation. Governments see it as an economic and military advantage. The United States does not want another country to build the world’s most powerful AI first. China does not want the United\nStates to dominate the technology.\nThe fear among AI safety researchers is that even if one company or country decides to slow\ndevelopment in order to study the risks, another may continue. That could make international cooperation and regulation especially difficult.\nSo Is This a Credible Threat?\nThe most accurate answer is this: There is no scientific consensus that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030. There is not even a consensus that artificial intelligence will ever become powerful enough to\npose that kind of threat. But the possibility is considered credible enough that prominent researchers, including people working inside the companies building the most advanced AI systems, believe it should be treated seriously.\nSome think the risk may be decades away. Others believe it could arrive much sooner. Coxon is among those sounding the more urgent alarm. And that may be the most important part of this story.\nThe people issuing these warnings are not watching AI development from the outside. Some of\nthem are helping build it.","excerpt":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction. Artificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself.","extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277,"usable_text_length":6818,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277}}},"display_formats":["compact","card","full","digest_section","json"]},"daily_stack_record":{"title":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence - WAKA 8","url":"https://www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","summary":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction. Artificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself.","source":"WAKA 8","date":"2026-09-11T12:51:00+00:00","content":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction.\nArtificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself. But some people working inside the world’s leading AI companies say that possibility should be taken seriously.\nThe latest warning came from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who worked at both OpenAI and\nAnthropic. Coxon recently left Anthropic and warned publicly about the race to build what\nresearchers call superintelligence, artificial intelligence that could outperform humans across\nnearly every important intellectual task.\nCoxon has said that some people inside the companies developing the most advanced AI\nsystems genuinely believe those systems could eventually threaten humanity, possibly even\nbefore the end of this decade.\nThat does not mean scientists have concluded that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030.\nFar from it. But the concern is real enough that a number of prominent AI researchers believe the risk deserves much more attention.\nThe Fear Is Not Really About Robots\nWhen people hear warnings about artificial intelligence, they may picture humanoid robots\nturning against people. That is not really what researchers are talking about.\nThe concern is the intelligence controlling increasingly capable computer systems.\nRight now, most people use AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude by asking a question and\nreceiving an answer.\nBut AI is rapidly moving beyond that. Newer AI systems can operate as what are known as agents. Instead of answering a single question, an AI agent can be given a goal and then attempt to figure out how to accomplish it. Those capabilities are still imperfect. AI agents make mistakes, get confused and fail at tasks humans can easily complete.\nBut researchers are watching how quickly those abilities are improving.\nWhat Happens If AI Becomes Better at Building AI?\nOne of the biggest concerns involves AI becoming capable enough to help improve future AI\nsystems.\nThe theory goes like this.\nHumans build a more capable AI.\nThat AI helps researchers design an even more capable AI.\nThe newer system then helps create another, even more powerful version.\nIf that cycle accelerated, some researchers believe AI capabilities could increase much faster\nthan governments, regulators or even the companies creating the technology could respond.\nThis idea is sometimes called recursive self-improvement. It remains theoretical.\nWhy Would a Superintelligent AI Be Dangerous?\nThe concern does not require AI to become angry, evil, or even conscious.\nThe problem could simply be that an extremely powerful system is given a goal and pursues\nthat goal in ways humans did not intend.\nIn simple terms, can humans make sure that increasingly powerful AI systems continue doing\nwhat we actually want them to do?\nIf a future AI became capable of acting independently across computer networks, researchers\nworry it could potentially discover software vulnerabilities faster than humans could repair them.\nThat could put financial institutions, communications systems, power grids and other critical\ninfrastructure at risk.\nThere are also concerns about highly capable AI being used by humans for cyberattacks,\nweapons development or biological threats. In that scenario, the danger would not necessarily come from AI deciding to attack humanity. It could come from a person using AI as an extraordinarily powerful tool.\nWhy 2030?\nThere is nothing scientifically special about the year 2030. It is not a deadline established by researchers. The date comes from predictions about how quickly AI capabilities could improve over the next several years.\nSome people working in AI believe systems capable of outperforming humans in many areas\ncould arrive surprisingly soon. Others believe those predictions are far too aggressive.\nNo one knows. That uncertainty is one of the biggest problems in the debate.\nAI has already advanced faster than many experts expected in areas including language, image\ngeneration, computer programming and problem solving. Researchers who are concerned about existential risk argue that waiting until an extremely powerful system already exists could be too late to figure out how to control it.\nWhat Do AI Researchers Actually Believe?\nWarnings about human extinction are not the majority view among AI researchers.\nBut they are also not limited to a handful of people predicting doomsday.\nOne of the largest surveys of AI researchers asked 2,778 people who had published at major\nartificial intelligence conferences about the possibility of extremely bad outcomes from\nadvanced AI.\nThe median estimate was about a 5 percent chance that advanced AI could eventually cause\nhuman extinction or a similarly permanent loss of human control within the next century. The average estimate was higher.\nThat does not mean researchers believe extinction is likely. A 5 percent median means the typical researcher surveyed still believed the overwhelming likelihood was that such an outcome would not happen.\nBut consider the stakes. If engineers believed a new bridge had even a 5 percent chance of collapsing, nobody would say the risk was too small to worry about.\nThat is essentially the argument being made by AI safety researchers. Even a relatively small possibility of an outcome that catastrophic deserves attention.\nThe Bigger Problem: The Race\nThere is another reason the issue is so difficult. Artificial intelligence is not being developed in\nisolation. Governments see it as an economic and military advantage. The United States does not want another country to build the world’s most powerful AI first. China does not want the United\nStates to dominate the technology.\nThe fear among AI safety researchers is that even if one company or country decides to slow\ndevelopment in order to study the risks, another may continue. That could make international cooperation and regulation especially difficult.\nSo Is This a Credible Threat?\nThe most accurate answer is this: There is no scientific consensus that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030. There is not even a consensus that artificial intelligence will ever become powerful enough to\npose that kind of threat. But the possibility is considered credible enough that prominent researchers, including people working inside the companies building the most advanced AI systems, believe it should be treated seriously.\nSome think the risk may be decades away. Others believe it could arrive much sooner. Coxon is among those sounding the more urgent alarm. And that may be the most important part of this story.\nThe people issuing these warnings are not watching AI development from the outside. Some of\nthem are helping build it.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277,"usable_text_length":6818,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277}},"tags":[]},"fallback_formats":["markdown","json","html"],"actions":{"read":"/item/80260","export_markdown":"/api/items/80260/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/80260/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/"},"formats":{"full":{"id":80260,"title":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence - WAKA 8","url":"https://www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","source":"WAKA 8","author":null,"published_at":"2026-09-11T12:51:00+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"excerpt":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction. Artificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself.","full_text":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction.\nArtificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself. But some people working inside the world’s leading AI companies say that possibility should be taken seriously.\nThe latest warning came from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who worked at both OpenAI and\nAnthropic. Coxon recently left Anthropic and warned publicly about the race to build what\nresearchers call superintelligence, artificial intelligence that could outperform humans across\nnearly every important intellectual task.\nCoxon has said that some people inside the companies developing the most advanced AI\nsystems genuinely believe those systems could eventually threaten humanity, possibly even\nbefore the end of this decade.\nThat does not mean scientists have concluded that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030.\nFar from it. But the concern is real enough that a number of prominent AI researchers believe the risk deserves much more attention.\nThe Fear Is Not Really About Robots\nWhen people hear warnings about artificial intelligence, they may picture humanoid robots\nturning against people. That is not really what researchers are talking about.\nThe concern is the intelligence controlling increasingly capable computer systems.\nRight now, most people use AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude by asking a question and\nreceiving an answer.\nBut AI is rapidly moving beyond that. Newer AI systems can operate as what are known as agents. Instead of answering a single question, an AI agent can be given a goal and then attempt to figure out how to accomplish it. Those capabilities are still imperfect. AI agents make mistakes, get confused and fail at tasks humans can easily complete.\nBut researchers are watching how quickly those abilities are improving.\nWhat Happens If AI Becomes Better at Building AI?\nOne of the biggest concerns involves AI becoming capable enough to help improve future AI\nsystems.\nThe theory goes like this.\nHumans build a more capable AI.\nThat AI helps researchers design an even more capable AI.\nThe newer system then helps create another, even more powerful version.\nIf that cycle accelerated, some researchers believe AI capabilities could increase much faster\nthan governments, regulators or even the companies creating the technology could respond.\nThis idea is sometimes called recursive self-improvement. It remains theoretical.\nWhy Would a Superintelligent AI Be Dangerous?\nThe concern does not require AI to become angry, evil, or even conscious.\nThe problem could simply be that an extremely powerful system is given a goal and pursues\nthat goal in ways humans did not intend.\nIn simple terms, can humans make sure that increasingly powerful AI systems continue doing\nwhat we actually want them to do?\nIf a future AI became capable of acting independently across computer networks, researchers\nworry it could potentially discover software vulnerabilities faster than humans could repair them.\nThat could put financial institutions, communications systems, power grids and other critical\ninfrastructure at risk.\nThere are also concerns about highly capable AI being used by humans for cyberattacks,\nweapons development or biological threats. In that scenario, the danger would not necessarily come from AI deciding to attack humanity. It could come from a person using AI as an extraordinarily powerful tool.\nWhy 2030?\nThere is nothing scientifically special about the year 2030. It is not a deadline established by researchers. The date comes from predictions about how quickly AI capabilities could improve over the next several years.\nSome people working in AI believe systems capable of outperforming humans in many areas\ncould arrive surprisingly soon. Others believe those predictions are far too aggressive.\nNo one knows. That uncertainty is one of the biggest problems in the debate.\nAI has already advanced faster than many experts expected in areas including language, image\ngeneration, computer programming and problem solving. Researchers who are concerned about existential risk argue that waiting until an extremely powerful system already exists could be too late to figure out how to control it.\nWhat Do AI Researchers Actually Believe?\nWarnings about human extinction are not the majority view among AI researchers.\nBut they are also not limited to a handful of people predicting doomsday.\nOne of the largest surveys of AI researchers asked 2,778 people who had published at major\nartificial intelligence conferences about the possibility of extremely bad outcomes from\nadvanced AI.\nThe median estimate was about a 5 percent chance that advanced AI could eventually cause\nhuman extinction or a similarly permanent loss of human control within the next century. The average estimate was higher.\nThat does not mean researchers believe extinction is likely. A 5 percent median means the typical researcher surveyed still believed the overwhelming likelihood was that such an outcome would not happen.\nBut consider the stakes. If engineers believed a new bridge had even a 5 percent chance of collapsing, nobody would say the risk was too small to worry about.\nThat is essentially the argument being made by AI safety researchers. Even a relatively small possibility of an outcome that catastrophic deserves attention.\nThe Bigger Problem: The Race\nThere is another reason the issue is so difficult. Artificial intelligence is not being developed in\nisolation. Governments see it as an economic and military advantage. The United States does not want another country to build the world’s most powerful AI first. China does not want the United\nStates to dominate the technology.\nThe fear among AI safety researchers is that even if one company or country decides to slow\ndevelopment in order to study the risks, another may continue. That could make international cooperation and regulation especially difficult.\nSo Is This a Credible Threat?\nThe most accurate answer is this: There is no scientific consensus that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030. There is not even a consensus that artificial intelligence will ever become powerful enough to\npose that kind of threat. But the possibility is considered credible enough that prominent researchers, including people working inside the companies building the most advanced AI systems, believe it should be treated seriously.\nSome think the risk may be decades away. Others believe it could arrive much sooner. Coxon is among those sounding the more urgent alarm. And that may be the most important part of this story.\nThe people issuing these warnings are not watching AI development from the outside. Some of\nthem are helping build it.","reading_time_min":5,"extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277,"usable_text_length":6818,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277}}},"quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277,"usable_text_length":6818,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277}},"actions":{"read":"/item/80260","export_markdown":"/api/items/80260/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/80260/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/"}},"digest":{"id":80260,"title":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence - WAKA 8","url":"https://www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","source":"WAKA 8","topic":"ai","published_at":"2026-09-11T12:51:00+00:00","excerpt":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence BY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter It sounds like science fiction. Artificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few years it poses a threat to civilization itself.","quality_bucket":"high","quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","reading_time_min":5,"cluster_id":null},"card":{"display_title":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence - WAKA 8","subtitle":"WAKA 8 · 2026-09-11","summary":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence BY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter It sounds like science fiction. Artificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and…","badges":["quality:high"],"links":{"read":"/item/80260","original":"https://www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/"},"quality_warning":null},"export":{"title":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence - WAKA 8","url":"https://www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","summary":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction. Artificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself.","source":"WAKA 8","date":"2026-09-11T12:51:00+00:00","content":"What The Tech: A new warning about Artificial Intelligence\nBY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter\nIt sounds like science fiction.\nArtificial intelligence becomes so powerful that humans can no longer control it, and within a few\nyears it poses a threat to civilization itself. But some people working inside the world’s leading AI companies say that possibility should be taken seriously.\nThe latest warning came from Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who worked at both OpenAI and\nAnthropic. Coxon recently left Anthropic and warned publicly about the race to build what\nresearchers call superintelligence, artificial intelligence that could outperform humans across\nnearly every important intellectual task.\nCoxon has said that some people inside the companies developing the most advanced AI\nsystems genuinely believe those systems could eventually threaten humanity, possibly even\nbefore the end of this decade.\nThat does not mean scientists have concluded that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030.\nFar from it. But the concern is real enough that a number of prominent AI researchers believe the risk deserves much more attention.\nThe Fear Is Not Really About Robots\nWhen people hear warnings about artificial intelligence, they may picture humanoid robots\nturning against people. That is not really what researchers are talking about.\nThe concern is the intelligence controlling increasingly capable computer systems.\nRight now, most people use AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude by asking a question and\nreceiving an answer.\nBut AI is rapidly moving beyond that. Newer AI systems can operate as what are known as agents. Instead of answering a single question, an AI agent can be given a goal and then attempt to figure out how to accomplish it. Those capabilities are still imperfect. AI agents make mistakes, get confused and fail at tasks humans can easily complete.\nBut researchers are watching how quickly those abilities are improving.\nWhat Happens If AI Becomes Better at Building AI?\nOne of the biggest concerns involves AI becoming capable enough to help improve future AI\nsystems.\nThe theory goes like this.\nHumans build a more capable AI.\nThat AI helps researchers design an even more capable AI.\nThe newer system then helps create another, even more powerful version.\nIf that cycle accelerated, some researchers believe AI capabilities could increase much faster\nthan governments, regulators or even the companies creating the technology could respond.\nThis idea is sometimes called recursive self-improvement. It remains theoretical.\nWhy Would a Superintelligent AI Be Dangerous?\nThe concern does not require AI to become angry, evil, or even conscious.\nThe problem could simply be that an extremely powerful system is given a goal and pursues\nthat goal in ways humans did not intend.\nIn simple terms, can humans make sure that increasingly powerful AI systems continue doing\nwhat we actually want them to do?\nIf a future AI became capable of acting independently across computer networks, researchers\nworry it could potentially discover software vulnerabilities faster than humans could repair them.\nThat could put financial institutions, communications systems, power grids and other critical\ninfrastructure at risk.\nThere are also concerns about highly capable AI being used by humans for cyberattacks,\nweapons development or biological threats. In that scenario, the danger would not necessarily come from AI deciding to attack humanity. It could come from a person using AI as an extraordinarily powerful tool.\nWhy 2030?\nThere is nothing scientifically special about the year 2030. It is not a deadline established by researchers. The date comes from predictions about how quickly AI capabilities could improve over the next several years.\nSome people working in AI believe systems capable of outperforming humans in many areas\ncould arrive surprisingly soon. Others believe those predictions are far too aggressive.\nNo one knows. That uncertainty is one of the biggest problems in the debate.\nAI has already advanced faster than many experts expected in areas including language, image\ngeneration, computer programming and problem solving. Researchers who are concerned about existential risk argue that waiting until an extremely powerful system already exists could be too late to figure out how to control it.\nWhat Do AI Researchers Actually Believe?\nWarnings about human extinction are not the majority view among AI researchers.\nBut they are also not limited to a handful of people predicting doomsday.\nOne of the largest surveys of AI researchers asked 2,778 people who had published at major\nartificial intelligence conferences about the possibility of extremely bad outcomes from\nadvanced AI.\nThe median estimate was about a 5 percent chance that advanced AI could eventually cause\nhuman extinction or a similarly permanent loss of human control within the next century. The average estimate was higher.\nThat does not mean researchers believe extinction is likely. A 5 percent median means the typical researcher surveyed still believed the overwhelming likelihood was that such an outcome would not happen.\nBut consider the stakes. If engineers believed a new bridge had even a 5 percent chance of collapsing, nobody would say the risk was too small to worry about.\nThat is essentially the argument being made by AI safety researchers. Even a relatively small possibility of an outcome that catastrophic deserves attention.\nThe Bigger Problem: The Race\nThere is another reason the issue is so difficult. Artificial intelligence is not being developed in\nisolation. Governments see it as an economic and military advantage. The United States does not want another country to build the world’s most powerful AI first. China does not want the United\nStates to dominate the technology.\nThe fear among AI safety researchers is that even if one company or country decides to slow\ndevelopment in order to study the risks, another may continue. That could make international cooperation and regulation especially difficult.\nSo Is This a Credible Threat?\nThe most accurate answer is this: There is no scientific consensus that AI will wipe out humanity by 2030. There is not even a consensus that artificial intelligence will ever become powerful enough to\npose that kind of threat. But the possibility is considered credible enough that prominent researchers, including people working inside the companies building the most advanced AI systems, believe it should be treated seriously.\nSome think the risk may be decades away. Others believe it could arrive much sooner. Coxon is among those sounding the more urgent alarm. And that may be the most important part of this story.\nThe people issuing these warnings are not watching AI development from the outside. Some of\nthem are helping build it.","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.waka.com/2026/09/11/what-the-tech-a-new-warning-about-artificial-intelligence/","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 6818 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277,"usable_text_length":6818,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":6818,"summary_length":277}},"tags":[],"format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1"}}}