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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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The civil servant

Things are changing behind the scenes, so you must decide: do you want human civil servants or AI bots?

Protesters on Whitehall demand the government pause its AI use, London, 16 September 2026.
Protesters on Whitehall demand the government pause its AI use, London, 16 September 2026. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Another day, another apocalyptic warning about the likelihood that rampantly uncontrollable artificial intelligence will solve all of our problems, including the problem of being alive.

Hot on the heels of disgruntled Anthropic researchers announcing the end of civilisation by 2030, we’ve now had the portentously named Hugging Face incident, as well as the Australian government’s grim discovery of a rogue AI’s attack on its Medicare website. Swarms of experts are now falling over each other to warn us that much, much worse is on the way.

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