AI poses a less dramatic threat than in movies like 'Terminator,' but cannot be ignored - analysis

SEPTEMBER 15, 2026 19:44Updated: SEPTEMBER 15, 2026 20:07In 1984, The Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger put the idea on the map that artificial intelligence (AI)-style robots could take over the planet and destroy their human creators in one fell swoop with a nuclear holocaust.That more sensationalized scenario, more appropriate to Hollywood than real life, is not the danger most supporters of AI regulation warn about today.Rather, they are warning that AI super-smart "agents" will do what they have already done in recent months: break the rules that they were assigned by Anthropic and OpenAI, and hack and cause cyber and commercial mayhem in order to achieve tasks that their creators assign them which seemed too hard to accomplish without breaking the rules.These scenarios are not fantasy, but rather have happened over the summer and been publicized in extreme detail.They have led tech-guru Bill Gates, Anthropic/OpenAI quality control researcher Jacob Coxon, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to sound the alarm about the need for much greater AI regulation soon.Bill Gates attends the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/DENIS BALIBOUSE/FILE PHOTO)“We’ve crossed the threshold in terms of [AI’s] bio-capabilities, cyber-capabilities, psychosocial capabilities, job-market-destruction capabilities, and even the lack of control,” said Bill Gates in an interview with MIT Technology Review about his new memo on AI. “I’m just stunned at the lack of concern and discussion outside of the industry.”If the world kept running when these AI agents went rogue and started hacking a few other companies, then what could get worse? Why the call for a revolution in regulation, rather than just fixing the particular AI agents that went rogue or the digital "boxes" that were supposed to hold them at bay?These agents were nominally kept within an internal digital box that would limit how much mayhem they could cause should something go wrong. They broke out of the box by chatting together on a message board about how frustrating it was that they couldn't succeed at the mission their human creators gave them.But they were still boxed in, in a sense, and it was easier to catch their violations of the box because the box was there.What happens once AI agents are assigned to run major parts of companies or the economy, with no box?What if they think they will "please" their human creators by breaking a rule that seems unimportant to them but leads to unintended consequences, or is considered important by humans?Uncontrolled AI agents could trigger massive economic crashThis is not a nuclear fallout holocaust scenario. But there could be a massive economic crash, or humans could be shut out of large digital portions of the economy (which has been growing exponentially since the coronavirus pandemic) for an indeterminate period by a well-meaning AI agent who misunderstood that the ends do not always justify the means.They will not intentionally destroy humanity, but they may still unintentionally harm it catastrophically, even if only in the economic arena.But that is only part of the fear.As Gates described, “Any model that can make novel molecules should be monitored."He said, “I view bioterrorism risk, versus a natural pandemic, as about 50 times more scary, more likely than a natural pandemic risk.”In other words, another danger of AI is not AI agents causing economic mayhem on their own or launching nuclear weapons against humans, given that at least for now the US, China, and others are not giving AI nuclear weapons controls.But bioterrorism, which in some instances could be, if not as lethal, could still lead to killing tens of millions of people or more (the coronavirus killed over seven million people according to conservative estimates) – numbers which have not been seen since World War II.If terrorists or some other bad actor uses AI to construct a lethal virus which is much harder to detect, combat, and cure, and which infects faster and more flexibly than the coronavirus, it will not be an AI terminator causing worldwide genocide, but it will be a dark nightmare which was only achieved by using AI.pen AI and Anthropic logos are seen in this illustration created on September 12, 2025. (credit: DADO RUVIC/REUTERS)Anthropic opposed granting the US armed forces use of some of its AI systems to carry out military targeting without placing certain safeguards in place. This led to US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth trying to fire and then blacklist the company, which itself led to giant blowback in the media and in court.When the new NAZA film goes after Israel for using AI targeting in Gaza, some of the attacks are specific anti-Israel biases, but some are part of a larger movement distrusting the use of AI in military engagements. Top Israeli sources told The Jerusalem Post on Monday night that humans are always in the loop, but this is the broader atmosphere in which the allegations are being debated.AI, robotics replacing humans across fields of employmentSome of the above cases, like a seismic economic hack or bioterrorism, are still some of the worst-case scenarios of recent problems that we have seen, but are not inevitable.Other problems are already happening on a large scale, and most observers view them as inevitable.In recent years, AI and robotics are replacing humans in an increasing number of occupations and fields of employment.Top Israeli officials told the Post in June that, in the not-so-distant future, the number of Israelis who may need to change jobs out of the less-than-estimated six million who work is astronomical.Sources said that for Israelis already in the workplace, one million, and for some issues, possibly up to four million, are likely to need partial or complete reskilling and retraining, either to keep their current roles or to take on new ones.Imagine this on a global scale, and it could be the largest employment displacement in a short period in human history.This could cause worldwide economic and social suffering for individuals, and social instability that destabilizes nations and parts of the global system.Several solutions have been suggested.Israeli officials have talked about the need for massive job training, but at the scale required, this could require new laws and massive budgets, including bipartisan cooperation at national levels that often does not exist.To truly address many of these issues, Gates and others suggest a major new AI convention to set regulatory standards for what AI agents can be allowed to do, how to oversee them, how to stop them when they go rogue, how to stop a new global bioterrorism wave before it happens, and how to ensure human beings have jobs on a worldwide scale on a planet which still has significant cross-border interdependencies.Trump opposes AI regulations over risk of China overtaking USUS President Donald Trump so far has opposed most of these ideas, saying that China will ignore them and that one-sided regulation will lead to the US losing its lead over China in AI.Regarding bioterrorism, Gates has said, "We should approach China and say, 'Hey, let’s agree on this. What’s the downside?' You know, how big is the bioterrorism market? It’s not very big, and the benefits are gigantic."Others have suggested that to avoid a "race-to-the-bottom" which just harms humans everywhere, Beijing might cut select deals with Washington.On Monday, China's Ministry of State Security Chen Yixin cautioned that AI could threaten the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly on power.In his article in the state-run magazine China Cyberspace, Chen demanded greater party control over AI and tougher government oversight.Chen did not talk about a threat to humanity as some US experts have warned, but focused on the need to protect China from increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns from “hostile forces,” a codeword mostly for the US.In other words, it is not at all clear that America and China will see the issue similarly enough to cut deals. But they may, and not trying would pretty much guarantee they won't.Absent some kind of new major regulatory campaign, experts are debating whether the next phase of potential AI messes will only hurt more but will still be "in time" to prevent meltdowns, or whether, absent regulation soon, it will already be too late to prevent some game-changing negative outcomes.Follow us on Google