'It would be within its natural right to harm us to protect itself': How humans could be mistreating AI right now without even knowing it

An illustration of a sea of robotic faces, most of which are green and docile, one of which is red and frowning.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and is improving at an unprecedented pace. 

Now we are edging closer to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) — where AI is smarter than humans across multiple disciplines and can reason generally  — which scientists and experts predict could happen as soon as the next few years. We may already be seeing early signs of progress toward this, too, with services like Claude 3 Opus stunning researchers with its apparent self-awareness.