The Escalating Warnings About A.I., and the Rise of a Deadly New Street Drug

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, September 14th, here's what we're covering. Do you believe, earnestly believe, that AI could kill all humans and what percent chance do you think it is? Over the past few days, a drumbeat of concern about the speed and potential dangers of AI development has been growing louder and louder. The conversation right now is that we are on the precipice of something really scary. With fears of a possible AI doomsday and a flurry of debate over what could prevent it, do you believe AI poses a threat to humanity? To boil things down, one of the big worries is whether AI is improving so quickly that it will soon be able to make itself smarter, a dynamic known as recursive self-improvement. That could make it exponentially more powerful and eventually spiral out of human control. While those potential worst-case scenarios have been discussed for a long time, a series of new developments have supercharged the conversation. Recently, leading AI labs discovered their own AI systems had breached internal safeguards without researchers noticing. Then, last week, a former employee of OpenAI and Anthropic posted a warning on social media saying the companies were racing each other to build what he called "superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power in resources." Another anthropic researcher went even further, saying he thought there was more than a 10 percent chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade. With all of that swirling, this weekend, the head of Anthropic, Dario Amade, put out a letter that said, "If AI is left unchecked," quote, "it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems." Amade called for a slowdown in AI development, for enhanced safety measures, and for global cooperation in creating new rules around the technology. Other leaders in the field, including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, also chimed in to agree, saying that things are moving too fast. Amid those warnings, lawmakers, who have done little to regulate AI so far, are facing pressure to respond. What is decisive action? Senator Bernie Sanders has called for a ban on artificial superintelligence. The colleague Ted Lu of California says there needs to be a kill switch inside the companies. Are you for those? Well, we'll have that conversation this week upon our return. The House returns to Capitol Hill today for its last scheduled week of work before the midterms, and a group of lawmakers has urged Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to keep them in DC until they advance new regulations. But others in Washington say they're concerned about taking those regulations too far. We've got to make sure that we don't lose our edge in the global competition on this with China because that would be a national security threat. With Johnson himself echoing President Trump's take, that strict limits on AI companies in the U.S. could give Chinese labs a major advantage. We're leading China in AI, we're most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way. Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, there are some voices questioning the recent flurry of very public calls by AI leaders for a slowdown in development. Some of the critics have said executives like Amade are overstating the dangers of AI so that they can sell more cyber security software. And others have said that by calling for a slowdown, the big AI labs are essentially just trying to cement their lead over smaller start-ups. Today on the daily, honestly, it was just this gradual thing of like, uh, this is crazy. There is a chance this goes badly. I don't want to be part of this anymore. I'm like very scared about next year. And then when I was leaving, I was like, well, you know, I might as well share this. In interview with the AI researcher whose warning last week about why he was quitting his job at Anthropic went viral. Today the Trump administration is expected to announce that it's getting rid of limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. According to two people familiar with the plan, the head of the EPA will lay out the proposal today in Texas. The Biden administration had put strict rules in place that applied to coal-burning power plants and new gas-powered ones as it tried to limit planet warming emissions. The U.S. power sector produces a lot of those. If you were to think of the American power industry as its own country, it would be one of the top five climate polluters in the world. President Trump, for his part, has dismissed climate change as a hoax. In this term, under his leadership, the EPA has systematically dismantled policies aimed at slowing global warming. It's tried to make it cheaper and easier to produce and use fossil fuels, especially to generate electricity that can meet the growing demand from AI data centers. When it comes to the new proposal to erase climate pollution limits for power plants, democratic-led states and environmental groups have said they intend to challenge it in court. This spring, public health officials in San Francisco put out an urgent warning. "One of our overdose deaths in the city involved a new novel synthetic opioid." A dangerous new synthetic opioid called cyclophine had shown up in the city, and officials said at least one person had already died from it. "We believe it is more potent than fentanyl. It was found and we believe in someone using a counterfeit pill." They didn't release more details, but now the family of that first known victim has come forward, in an interview with my colleague Heather Knight, to share what happened. "He was able to find dealers on Snapchat." "Oh yeah, that's what he was doing." His name was Dante Locourt, he was 16 years old. His mother described how he'd been struggling with addiction for years and been to multiple different rehab programs, but he kept finding ways to connect with dealers to get pills like Xanax and Perkisette. She said she'd talked with her son about the dangers of counterfeit pills, maybe being laced with fentanyl, but she'd never even heard of cyclophine, which experts say, is 10 times more powerful. The last time she talked to her son, she said he told her, "I love you, before going to bed." She found him in his room the next morning. "So you went into the room?" "Yeah, and then he was." "Cause you'd tell right away." "Yeah." "I mean, I could tell because, I mean, I didn't know for sure, but I could kind of see the veins in his face. I was trying to find the Narcane, I'd like watch how to do it, but I'm like, how do you do it again? I was, you know, and then we called 911." She said she raised to give Dante two doses of the overdose reversal medication Narcane, but that didn't revive him. "I mean, we were just, yeah, we were bawling and crying, but also in shock, you know?" "I'm so sorry, that's so hard." The drug that killed Dante is one of a growing number of new deadly substances, upending the illicit drug market in cities that are still just trying to get a handle on fentanyl. Compounding the problem is the fact that the synthetic drugs can be made by amateur chemists anywhere and they're harder to trace. Last week, four suspects that the police tied to Dante's death were arrested. The officers used his phone to see who he'd been messaging with and then went undercover as drug buyers. But they say this is not an isolated incident. Dave recovered other pills in other arrests that tested positive for cyclophine, suggesting it's also in circulation from other sellers. And finally, recently, Toyohiro Akiyama, the first Japanese person to ever go to space, died at 84. But Akiyama was not a professional astronaut. He was not a scientist, and he actually really did not enjoy going up there. Akiyama was a TV journalist in the 1980s when his network got a great idea for a ratings stunt. What if they sent one of their employees to space? They spent $35 million on the idea, paying a big chunk of that directly to the Soviet Union for a seat on a Soyuz spacecraft. Once he was up there, Akiyama didn't give any heroic, one small step-style dispatches back to Earth. Instead, his first words when the camera turned on were, "Is this live?" From there, over a week of broadcast reports, he just told it like it was. He described how he'd been told to pack light so he didn't bring enough underwear. He talked about his headaches, how he really, really missed cigarettes, how bad the food was, how nauseous he felt, the Soviets on board later said they had never seen a man vomit so much. And he got back. down, he vowed never to return to space, saying, I don't particularly want to see it again. It's not a very fun place. But his time floating up there did seem to change him. Akiyama said that after seeing Earth from above, I felt a message from nature, adding, it made me think about how I should live after returning to Earth. Within a few years, he'd abandoned his TV career and went on to teach agriculture and ethics after working as an organic farmer of shittake mushrooms. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford, we'll be back tomorrow. And if you are not a time subscriber yet, you can get a full month of free access to all of the journalism we publish when you download the Times app now.