The past few weeks have witnessed the publication of dozens of articles warning that artificial intelligence (AI) is creeping ever closer to the moment when it decides whether or not to wipe out the human race. Such warnings are not new. Political consultant Bruce Mehlman points out there has been a string such warnings over the past dozen years.[1] The latest rash of warnings were triggered by Jacob Coxon, who resigned from Anthropic and claimed “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Mehlman notes, “While Coxon was hardly the first to warn of AI doom, nor the most prominent, his post struck a chord, with many proclaiming a ‘hinge moment’. Within days Sam Altman ruled out a 2026 IPO and Dario Amodei published ‘We Must Pace the Frontier,’ with Altman and Musk endorsing the call for slowing research.”

The Existential Concern

Myriad concerns about AI have been expressed over the past few years. At a recent conference, Bill Gates insisted that AI is biggest problem humanity has ever faced.[2] His concerns include risks of mass unemployment, and major social, political, and economic upheaval across the globe. Coxon’s concern is even greater — the total extinction of the human race. Journalist Kaitlyn Huamani observes, “AI companies themselves have at times highlighted the technology’s threat to humanity, which skeptics have seen as part of a push to make their products seem all-powerful. Coxon said the fears he outlined in his post are not a ‘marketing stunt.’”[3] Those sentiments were echoed by Evan Hubinger, a Team Lead at Anthropic, who wrote on X, “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.”[4].

Human-level extinction by AI has been a focus of science fiction for years. The question is: Is the risk of wiping out the human race now a reality? Technology journalist Nilesh Christopher opines that, if extinction is a real possibility, the question becomes: “How could AI destroy humanity?”[5] Christopher reports, “Researchers focused on potential doomsday scenarios are concerned about an unintended loss of control as AI is used to do more things independently. … Powerful AI agents could, in theory, become capable of advanced hacking or building bioweapons. A superintelligent AI system that ignores human goals or misinterprets commands could, naysayers say, scramble people’s bank accounts, disrupt essential water and power supplies, or take over missile-launch systems.” In other words, doomsdayers are concerned about bots and the processes they control.

Whether or not the threat of AI wiping out the human race is real, doomsdayers have won over the public. Journalist Erin Doherty reports, “A new POLITICO Poll finds that a plurality of Americans favor pausing the development of more advanced AI models, and 63 percent say the technology poses at least a moderate risk of destroying humanity.”[6] She observes that poll results underscore “the depth of people’s anxieties about the rapidly developing technology — and how quickly public sentiment around AI has hardened.” These concerns have resulted in the unimaginable taking place — Senator Bernie Sanders and Stephen Bannon taking a stage together and agreeing on something![7]

Journalist Alex Veiga believes we should lower the temperature of the discussion. He writes, “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.”[8] I suspect that lack of clarity is what raised the temperature of the discussion in the first place. Veiga goes on to address Christopher’s question about how could AI destroy humanity. He writes, “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.”

Concluding Thoughts

One thing is clear: Technology will continue to outpace efforts to regulate it. Opinion columnist Thomas Friedman writes, “We’ve become a hot mess trying to figure out how to manage this new A.I. species we have birthed.”[9] Although he doesn’t specifically mention the risk of human-level extinction, he writes, “It’s too late to think that better control of future A.I. models by the U.S. and China will fix the challenges we face today from the dangerous models already out there, on the loose and unable to be recalled. What we need to agree on immediately is how we work together to defend against these threats that are already here and can cause enormous damage and societal instability in America and China.” The optimist in me says world leaders will eventually see the light. The realist in me agrees with Friedman. It looks increasingly unlikely that global cooperation will be achieved as geopolitics continues to fracture the world. Whether the human race is doomed to be wiped out by AI remains to be seen. I doubt it will happen by the end of the decade.

Journalist Nat Rubio-Licht observes, “There is a lot of doom and gloom around AI right now as the risks of the tech heighten anxiety around all of the ways it can be used for malice. And that risk isn't unwarranted, as we've recently seen warnings that frontier labs are having to thwart attempts to use the tech to create bioweapons.”[10] She adds, “But we should always remember that AI is simply a very powerful tool that can be used for good or bad. Amid the current fear, the good is often being overshadowed.” Despite his concerns about AI, the fact that AI has the huge potential to do good things hasn’t been lost on Bill Gates. His foundation recently “pledged to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years to expand global access to artificial intelligence and use it to tackle social inequalities.”[11] Journalist Claire Moses observes, “The intervention came amid a growing debate over the risks posed by the technology, with many of the industry’s leading figures calling for a slowdown in its development. … The funding will be used to support A.I. projects in health care, agriculture and education, and to develop data sets in more languages.”[12]

It would be tragic to let doomsday scenarios negatively affect efforts of those trying to improve the world rather than destroy it. I agree with journalist David Wallace-Wells, who writes, “If the A.I. panic shows us nothing else, it’s that this was always a false binary. We don’t have to choose between progress and safety. More to the point: in a democracy, or something close to it, we shouldn’t let others choose for us.”[13] Artificial intelligence doesn’t have to become the humanity’s grim reaper.

Footnotes

[1] Bruce Mehlman, “Coxon is neither the first nor the most prominent technologist to warn of AI risk,” Bruce Mehlman's Age of Disruption, 13 September 2026.

[2] Jennifer Mattson, “Bill Gates has a dire warning about AI,” Fast Company, 10 September 2026.

[3] Kaitlyn Huamani, “Anthropic researcher resigns with warning about the dangers of AI development,” Associated Press, 9 September 2026.

[4] Amrith Ramkumar, “Anthropic Researcher Quits Over ‘Out-of-Control’ AI Fears,” The Wall Street Journal, 9 September 2026.

[5] Nilesh Christopher, “Is there really a 10% chance AI could kill us all?” Los Angeles Times, 11 September 2026.

[6] Erin Doherty, “Poll: Americans say there’s a serious risk of AI destroying humanity,” Politico, 16 September 2026.

[7] Jeremy W. Peters and Cecilia Kang, “Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders Condemn Tech ‘Oligarchs’ and Demand A.I. Reforms,” The New York Times, 15 September 2026.

[8] Alex Veiga, “What to know about recent dire AI predictions and calls for safeguards,” PBS, 14 September 2026.

[9] Thomas L. Friedman, “It’s Already Too Late to Stop the A.I. Threat,” The New York Times, 15 September 2026.

[10] Nat Rubio-Licht, “What AI labs' safety pledges still don't solve,” The Deep View, 15 September 2026.

[11] Claire Moses, “Gates Foundation Pledges $1 Billion to Combat A.I. Inequality,” The New York Times, 15 September 2026.

[12] Ibid.

[13] David Wallace-Wells, “We may finally be ready to do something about A.I. What took so long?” New York Times email, 16 September 2026.