Experts Sound Alarm: Could AI Really Wipe Out Humanity?
Warnings against artificial intelligence going rogue and leading to a disastrous outcome for humanity have grown louder throughout 2026.Alarm bells are even being rung by those helming the technology, including OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Anthropic honcho Dario Amodei.This week a researcher who has worked at both those companies, Jacob Coxon, said he quit Anthropic to warn “AI can kill us all by the end of the decade… These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”The “Terminator” series of movies portrayed humaoid robots rising up and taking over the world, controlled by a central mainframe which bore all the hallmarks of a rogue AI. Warner BrosAs AI hurtles toward Artificial General Intelligence, here’s how the rise of machines could potentially go about wiping us all out.InfrastructureHumans have been automating jobs for decades, almost all of which are now controlled through the internet — the domain where AI has the most access and control. “AI systems could [attack] the electrical grid, transportation networks, financial markets,” Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, told The Post. Sources explained to The Post how AI could potentially jailbreak almost any device, capturing water plants and forcing surges through pipes until they burst, cutting off supply to whole cities. It could attack and disable electric grids, leaving huge areas in complete darkness, then disable phone towers. Those who try to escape by vehicle would face chaos, with traffic lights hijacked and gas stations taken offline. ATMs would not operate, and even if you were to access your bank — all funds could be wiped. Jacob Coxon claims that his colleagues at Anthropic were flirting with the end of humanity. Jacob Coxon / XHumans could even be unwittingly recruited for sabotage missions. “Anything we can do on the Internet, AI can do, including pretending to be a human,” added Patri Friedman, an early adapter of AI and founder of Pronomos Capital.“AI will have no trouble making money – whether it’s through financial trading or doing services for people. It can impersonate a human and hire people or blackmail them to carry out physical ops … such as smuggling a USB thumb drive which can then infect computers on a localized network.”Even if it didn’t have devious intentions, AI could still kill people, even inadvertently.“I worry about AI having no common sense,” said Gary Rivlin, author of “AI Valley” told The Post. “Then it somehow, stupidly, drains off all the water because it doesn’t understand what a human would understand. These things know everything and they understand nothing.”Will Smith’s 2004 film “I, Robot” featured a society where robots serve humanity, until something goes wrong. ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett CollectionStuart Russell says that a Chernobyl scale disaster would, unbelievably, be a best case scenario among possible AI outcomes. APBioweapons Scientists at top universities have already used AI to create synthetic viruses, while warning about the technology’s misuse. OpenAI has acknowledged it plays a cat-and-mouse game to stay ahead of and block users who ask its ChatGPT program how to make poisons and bioweapons.“In five years,” believes Friedman, “it will be trivial for AI to design new drugs to help us or viruses to kill us all.” In fact, he added, “It’s happening right now.”An engineered fatal disease which is highly contagious but undetectable for days after infection could be near impossible to stop. A scenario could see an AI ordering various raw materials from different unlicensed labs in rogue nations, then hiring or tricking an unwitting human into combining and spreading them, quickly spelling disaster, sources described. Given that we’re deploying AI in medical research and drug development, it has massive access to knowledge about our bodies and their vulnerabilities. Also think how easily a pathogen can escape a lab — for instance what may have happened with COVID-19. Then imagine that pathogen supercharged by AI.Max Tegmark, a physics professor at MIT, believes that apocalyptic scenarios are all too possible if we don’t regulate AI. The Washington Post via Getty Images“We see AI getting better and better at making bioweapons,” Max Tegmark, an MIT physics professor and AI expert, told The Post. “Maybe we have one more year left, or something, until they get that good at making bioweapons… It would probably develop not just one bioweapon, but maybe a hundred different kinds and release them at the same time.” Nuclear capabilitiesHacking into US nuclear infrastructure — such as power plants or weapons of mass destruction — is another ready-made way AI could hasten the destruction of humanity.“Nuclear weapons systems are very well protected, but they’re well protected against the threats and the sort of capabilities people have had for years and decades, not against superhuman AI hacking,” Anthony Aguirre, CEO of Future of Life Institute, warned.A real-world example of how vulnerable nuclear facilities can be played out is evident with the case of Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm uncovered in 2010. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Natanz uranium enrichment facilities which were hit by the Stuxnet computer worm, severely damaging its infrastructure. Getty ImagesIt was the world’s first identified digital weapon, designed to physically destroy industrial equipment, deployed against Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. It proved a huge success, destroying nearly 1,000 centrifuges by manipulating their operational speeds. Perhaps most chillingly, the nuclear facility was closed off from the internet and operated on a top-secret closed internal computer circuit. No one has ever claimed responsibility for developing the virus, though it is suspected of being a joint US and Israeli military operation.Meanwhile, Rivlin noted AI agents playing war games tend to “press the nuclear button” — which humans don’t do because they know the consequences. This was proven by King’s College London, which in February used ChatGPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash in a series of 21 war games.“95% of games saw tactical nuclear use and 76% reached strategic nuclear threats,” Professor Kenneth Payne, of the Defense Studies Department, noted. “I think if I were in charge of the US NC3 — [the department for] nuclear weapon security and safety — I’d be terrified,” Aguirre added.The 1991 movie “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” depicted humanoid robots rising up and taking over the world. Everett CollectionAnthony Aguirre warned that we’re gradually offloading too many military capacities to artificial intelligence. Federation of American Scientists/ WikipediaMilitary takeoverThe military is already very AI forward. The US collects information from radar signals, satellite and drone imagery, electronic communications, and other sources then uses AI to put it all together into what’s known as a “common operating picture” of a battlefield, according to Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon’s chief digital and AI officer. AI technology has already been used to select targets during the recent Operation Epic Fury, while the Iranian government claims its cruise missiles are guided by AI. The Russian government has also boasted it uses completely AI guided drones to kill people in Ukraine, with no human involvement.Tegmark said that’s basically teeing up a misaligned AI system to annihilate us.“They’re already building AI-powered robots to kill people in all sorts of ways. We’re building drone swarms to shoot people, [drones] to blow people up,” he said. “There are all kinds of AI systems that are already designed by people to kill people. So, the most obvious thing [a rogue AI] can do is use those.”Aguirre says humans are flirting with “gradual disempowerment” by delegating decisions in war and national security to AI models, because at a certain point the AI could have more control over our military capabilities than we do. Jacob Coxon announced his resignation from Anthropic in a post on X on September 8th, citing threats to humanity. Jacob Coxon / XAI professor David Krueger says that the only way to save ourselves is pausing AI development. The Inside View / YoutubeCan the tech bros escape?Mark Zuckerberg has built a bunker in Hawaii and Peter Thiel bought a massive remote farm in New Zealand. But the experts who spoke with The Post unanimously agreed: its “almost childish,” as Russell put it, to think there will be any saving oneself from nightmare possibilities if they unfold. “If AI wants humans gone, we’re gone. Your bunker’s not gonna save you,” Aguirre said.How can we get out of this?If AI continues to develop at its current rate and decides to eliminate humans the “best case” scenario would likely be shut down power grids, transportation networks and financial markets causing the death of thousands before humans intervene and stop it – not an apocalypse but “a Chernobyl-scale disaster,” according to Russell. “The [government] would say, ‘Look, we gave you a chance. You totally blew it. You’ve killed thousands of people, cost us trillions of dollars. We’re shutting you down,’” he explained. “I talked to one of the leading AI CEOs who told me this is his best-case scenario.”However, this is by no means a foregone conclusion. Techno optimists maintain AI will remain under human control and continue to be a force for good. But experts advocated for a universal pause in development. Krueger called for an “immediate, indefinite, international moratorium on AI development.” Critics say if only the US did this, it would allow foreign adversaries to make all the progress behind our backs, but Kreuger pointed out other countries also don’t want to unleash the end times.He said of China: “They also don’t want to die.”
