Paul Virilio on the site of 'Ce qui arrive,' an installation he planned in Paris in 2002 to explore the idea of accidents.

(AMHERST, MASS.) With the race to build artificial intelligence systems smarter than any human has come a boom in “accidents.” In a safety test run by the company Anthropic, its own AI agent blackmailed an engineer to avoid being shut down. Criminals have used AI agents for data-extortion campaigns and to hack government agencies, banks and technology companies. In other tests, models have escaped from test environments into real organizational systems.

Several researchers who resigned from leading AI companies in 2026 have accused their employers of not taking the dangers seriously enough. In September, Bill Gates told “Meet the Press” that AI is “powerful enough to drive events that can cause a billion deaths.”

Originally published on theconversation.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.

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