Will it take a ‘Chornobyl-scale disaster’ for us to regulate AI?

‘The CEOs are telling us, “We’re on track to create superhuman intelligence, which has a good chance of causing human extinction.”’ Illustration: pilli/Getty Images

The AI company Anthropic has been making major headlines recently. Its trillion-dollar IPO plan and its blood feud with secretary of defense Pete Hegseth have attracted much attention, but two other events may be even more consequential.

In early June, the company posted an article describing early signs of recursive self-improvement (RSI), a process in which an AI system devises ways to increase its own intelligence, leading to a greater ability to improve itself, and so on.