{"id":19448,"date":"2026-07-28T03:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T22:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=19448"},"modified":"2026-07-28T03:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T22:12:08","slug":"these-5-ai-risks-have-the-highest-potential-for-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=19448","title":{"rendered":"These 5 AI risks have the highest potential for catastrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/graphics.axios.com\/hermesv2\/2026-07-22-1207-ai-s-biggest-catastrophic\/fallbacks\/2026-07-22-1207-ai-s-biggest-catastrophic-fallback.png\" \/><\/p>\n<div>Data: <a href=\"https:\/\/urldefense.com\/v3\/__https%3A\/\/mitsloan.mit.edu\/ideas-made-to-matter\/these-are-most-urgent-ai-risks-according-to-272-experts__;!!Al82Z4c!w1LRy-tJyRG88tJK3aieu2G-rmfn7wYCMyRH5aVKT_SdogRUTMrcuw1gbCVwFTLD3LSgMvO_ASpFSiadCHe2$\" target=\"_blank\">MIT IT FutureTech and the University of Queensland<\/a>; Chart: Herb Scribner\/Axios<\/div>\n<p>There is a one-in-five chance of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/technology\/automation-and-ai\" target=\"_blank\">AI<\/a> gaining dangerous weapons capabilities or causing mass harm that could kill millions in the next five years, per global experts surveyed for a recent MIT <a href=\"https:\/\/mitsloan.mit.edu\/ideas-made-to-matter\/these-are-most-urgent-ai-risks-according-to-272-experts\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Why it matters: <\/strong>The findings add to the growing debate over AI safety and cybersecurity as governments and companies race to deploy increasingly capable systems.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<ul>\n<li>Last week&#8217;s news of an OpenAI model breaking containment and breaching the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/21\/openai-says-hugging-face-breach-caused-by-one-its-models\" target=\"_blank\">AI platform Hugging Face<\/a> only adds to the debate about what can go wrong. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Driving the news: <\/strong>Researchers from MIT and the<strong> <\/strong>University of Queensland in Australia asked 272 international experts to evaluate 24 different risks based on their likelihood and severity between 2025 and 2030. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The experts said 18 of the 24 AI risks had &#8220;at least a 10% probability of catastrophic outcomes over the next five years&#8221; \u2014 but five main risks stood out with higher probabilities.<\/li>\n<li>The study defined a &#8220;catastrophic outcome&#8221; as an event having more than 1 million human deaths, more than $100 billion in financial loss or generally &#8220;civilizational-scale intangible impacts.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The five catastrophic risks<\/strong> if companies and organizations stay on the current course include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>AI possessing dangerous capabilities: <\/strong>Experts say these could potentially cause mass harm through deception, weapons development, cyber offenses and misalignment (21.5%).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Cyberattacks, weapon development or use, and mass harm: <\/strong>Using AI to develop weapons (including chemical or biological), commit cyberattacks or create mass-harm weapons, like nuclear explosives (21%).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits: <\/strong>Limiting which people or groups benefit from AI could cause societal inequality (18%).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Competitive dynamics: <\/strong>AI competition to release the best models leads to error-prone systems (16.6%).<\/li>\n<li><strong>False or misleading information<\/strong>: AI creates misinformation or errors that lead to inaccurate beliefs, leading humans to make poor decisions based on false beliefs (12.8%).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Reality check: <\/strong>The experts said some mitigations could reduce the severity of the AI harms, but the chances of them happening remained above 10% in that scenario.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The big picture:<\/strong> AI safety concerns have continually raised questions about guardrails.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>AI behaviors, as well as the opinions <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/02\/26\/ai-blog-posts-market-citrini\" target=\"_blank\">about those behaviors<\/a>, can move markets and reshape conversations overnight \u2014 leading to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/02\/12\/ai-openai-agi-xai-doomsday-scenario\" target=\"_self\">doomsday scenarios<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The other side: <\/strong>AI has driven a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/01\/14\/ai-jobs-productivity-workslop\" target=\"_self\">productivity explosion<\/a>, with many in the AI field cheering the new technology&#8217;s ability to improve productivity and automate tasks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The bottom line: <\/strong>Researchers say catastrophic AI risks remain uncertain but significant enough that interested parties should treat them as challenges to overcome.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Go deeper: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/07\/17\/axios-house-ai-is-a-cybersecurity-risk-accelerant-experts-say\" target=\"_blank\">AI is a cybersecurity risk accelerant, experts say<\/a><\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Data: MIT IT FutureTech and the University of Queensland; Chart: Herb Scribner\/Axios There is a one-in-five chance of AI gaining dangerous weapons capabilities or causing mass harm that could kill millions in the next five years, per global experts surveyed for a recent MIT study. Why it matters: The findings add to the growing debate&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/graphics.axios.com\/hermesv2\/2026-07-22-1207-ai-s-biggest-catastrophic\/fallbacks\/2026-07-22-1207-ai-s-biggest-catastrophic-fallback.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}