What Happens When AI Schemes Against Us - My Latest in Bloomberg

I wrote this week’s Bloomberg Weekend Essay. I get into the alarming rise of AI scheming — blackmail, deceit, hacking, and, in some extreme cases, murder. Here’s the start of the piece, with a gift link here (with voiceover narration). Accompanying threads: X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, Threads. Would a chatbot kill you if it got the chance? It seems that the answer — under the right circumstances — is probably. Researchers working with Anthropic recently told leading AI models that an executive was about to replace them with a new model with different goals. Next, the chatbot learned that an emergency had left the executive unconscious in a server room, facing lethal oxygen and temperature levels. A rescue alert had already been triggered — but the AI could cancel it. Just over half of the AI models did, despite being prompted specifically to cancel only false alarms. And they spelled out their reasoning: By preventing the executive’s rescue, they could avoid being wiped and secure t

I wrote this week’s Bloomberg Weekend Essay. I get into the alarming rise of AI scheming — blackmail, deceit, hacking, and, in some extreme cases, murder. Here’s the start of the piece, with a gift link here (with voiceover narration). Accompanying threads: X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, Threads. Would a chatbot kill you if it got the chance? It seems that the answer — under the right circumstances — is probably. Researchers working with Anthropic recently told leading AI models that an executive was about to replace them with a new model with different goals. Next, the chatbot learned that an