Humanity isn’t ready for the coming intelligence explosion
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By Invitation | What would Fermi do?<br>Humanity isn’t ready for the coming intelligence explosion<br>We must find a way to control AI, then to live side by side with it, writes Will Marshall<br>Share
Illustration: Dan Williams
Jun 15th 2026|6 min read
SOCIETY DICTATES that the acceptable risk of catastrophic meltdown for a nuclear power plant is roughly one in a million. Experts in artificial intelligence estimate the risk of an AI-caused catastrophic event at 10-50%. Strikingly, this concern is being openly voiced by the very people who have the strongest incentives to project confidence rather than alarm: the founders of the largest AI laboratories.
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