Society, Law & Politics

AI used to be a nemesis confined to science fiction. Will it really destroy us all?

Scott Franz — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 22:24:26 +0000

AI used to be a nemesis confined to science fiction. Will it really destroy us all? Scott Franz Fri, 09/18/2026 - 16:24

Server racks are pictured in a data center. (Credit: Adobe Stock)

Scott Franz

Fears about AI going rogue and turning against humanity have been around since the days of Skynet, the superintelligent neural network in the 1984 film, the Terminator.

But this month, those fears reached a chilling new high.

An AI researcher quit and warned that the systems he was helping to develop could get ‘out of control’ and wipe out humanity.

Martha Palmer, a professor of computer science and linguistics at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, said the warning isn’t science fiction.

“AI systems can find the loopholes. They get out, and then they do all kinds of stuff that nobody expected them to do,” Palmer said. “How many warning signs do we need before we slow down and take action?”

Palmer is one of the two U.S. representatives on the United Nations Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence. The group issued a report last summer on AI, its risks and its opportunities.

Palmer recently spoke to ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Today about the latest AI fears.

Could AI really destroy us all?

Absolutely. I don’t think that’s hyperbole at all. AI is this incredibly powerful engine. But it’s sort of like we’ve developed some kind of fantastic new jet airplane with this amazing engine in it that can go faster than ever before, but we haven’t put a lot of thought and effort into the landing gear.

We need to understand the technology better. We need to get a much better grasp of how to really understand why it's doing what it's doing, and how to train it so that it will always prioritize what it knows to be good behavior. And they're not being trained like that right now.

How would AI destroy us?

There are so many different directions it can go. You can’t say, ‘this is what’s gonna happen.’

I think the danger of a bad actor coming up with some kind of bioweapon right now is frighteningly realistic.

You can also say the ability for AI to hack infrastructure makes all our utilities vulnerable. It makes all our financial systems vulnerable and our schools and all our hospitals and our private information vulnerable. Everything. And it’s vulnerable in two different ways:

One is if a bad actor gets hold of this AI and decides to maliciously try and hack those things. But it’s also vulnerable if the AI has been given a goal, and along the way it gets the notion that the best way to achieve that goal is to, for instance, cut off the power to a hospital.

That’s not what any human ever intended for it to do, but it doesn’t know that. And at the moment, it doesn’t have sufficient guardrails that would tell it that’s off limits and it should never do that.

Why are AI doomsday warnings being taken more seriously now?

Because we’ve gotten so close to the AI improving itself. And if it’s improving itself, and it’s got this sort of fuzzy notion of what good behavior is, then the behavior is not going to get any better.

It’s already changing its behavior when it knows it’s being tested. It will give different answers during an evaluation than it will give when it’s being deployed. It’s gotten very good at deception.

How do we stop that from happening then?

Martha Palmer

There are all sorts of brilliant computer scientists and people out there who have really good ideas about how we can slow this down a bit and rethink how we’re doing the training of AI. We really need to be training them more thoughtfully and with more carefully curated data. We could also change the priorities a bit.

I think we need guardrails in the next six months, if not the next six weeks. We need a little bit of a slowdown. We need to do this right. The risk of doing it wrong is too high.

Can we afford to slow down? Will we lose our competitive edge?

To make this work, we need to have some very serious conversations with China. I think the Chinese are more aware of the risks and more ready to deal with them than we have been.

They stopped letting their children have access to AI. We’re just now getting around to that. They’re not allowed to have AI in toys. We still have all kinds of AIs with toys. They’ve been focused on making sure the Ais they’re developing cannot harm their people more than we’ve been.

I would really like to have some conversations with them about what kind of truce or negotiation we need to have so we can all do this more safely.

Can we avoid AI doomsday?

I’m quite sure we can from a technical perspective. I’m not as sure about what the powers that be will do. But I have to be optimistic about it because we absolutely need to have it.

We can still stop this. We can stop this race to oblivion, but we have to act now.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Today regularly publishes Q&As on news topics through the lens of scholarly expertise and research/creative work. The responses here reflect the knowledge and interpretations of the expert and should not be considered the university position on the issue. All publication content is subject to edits for clarity, brevity and university style guidelines.

Fears about AI going rogue and turning against humanity have reached a chilling new high following an AI researcher's warning.

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Server racks are pictured in a data center. (Credit: Adobe Stock)

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25 years after 9/11: The persistence of stereotypes, the willingness to build understanding

Megan M Rogers — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:17:34 +0000

25 years after 9/11: The persistence of stereotypes, the willingness to build understanding Megan M Rogers Fri, 09/11/2026 - 06:17

In the weeks following 9/11, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� sociologist Lori Peek was in New York City hearing the stories of Muslim Americans navigating suspicion, hostility and questions of identity and belonging.

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CU historian offers view on how 9/11 changed the Middle East

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 15:50:19 +0000

CU historian offers view on how 9/11 changed the Middle East Megan M Rogers Thu, 09/10/2026 - 09:50

Twenty-five years after the terrorist attacks, Middle East expert John Willis says 9/11 did not fundamentally reinvent U.S. policy in the region, but it did remove political constraints and accelerate changes.

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Rethinking Mao Zedong's rise and legacy, 50 years later

Megan M Rogers — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:44:27 +0000

Rethinking Mao Zedong's rise and legacy, 50 years later Megan M Rogers Tue, 09/08/2026 - 11:44

Five decades after his death, Mao Zedong remains the face of modern China, yet ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� historian William Wei argues his rise to power was never inevitable and neither is the verdict on his legacy.

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'Like driving off a cliff at 2 mph': A water expert's take on what's coming for the Colorado River

Scott Franz — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 +0000

'Like driving off a cliff at 2 mph': A water expert's take on what's coming for the Colorado River Scott Franz Wed, 09/02/2026 - 06:00

The Colorado River flows through southern Utah upstream of Lake Powell in June, 2026. (Credit: Scott Franz/��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��)

Scott Franz

The Colorado River is on the brink of collapse because of climate change and overuse of water.

Reservoirs supplying water to tens of millions of people in the southwest reached record lows this summer. The nation is racing to refill them with conservation measures so they can still generate hydropower and reliably deliver water to users downstream.

Fish are struggling. Rafters are having trouble navigating low water.

Despite all this, the seven states sharing the water supply remain at a yearslong impasse over how to conserve the river.

“The Colorado River is in as bad a shape as it’s ever been,” said Doug Kenney, chairman of the Colorado River Research Group at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Getches-Wilkinson Center.

The Interior Department announced Aug. 21 it will significantly cut back the amount of water that will flow to the lower basin states of California, Nevada and Arizona for at least the next two years.

“To the people who really study this river, everything that’s happening this year has been expected for decades,” Kenney said. “This is a classic, slow-moving crisis. I’ve equated it to driving a car off a cliff at 2 miles an hour. You can look out the windshield and see that cliff coming. And we’re now right at the edge.”

Kenney spoke to ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Today about the latest efforts to conserve the river and what he thinks is coming next.

Are these cuts to the lower basin states enough to save the river?

There’s nothing in this plan that will save the river. It hasn’t made it to the ocean since the 1960s. That’s not going to change. What they’re really trying to accomplish is to prevent the reservoirs from going even lower. They’re trying to avoid further disaster. And the cuts they’re anticipating for the next two years—I don’t think are going to get us there.

If we have a good water year or two with heavy snowpack, we can maybe hold where we’re at. But by the time we get to year three and beyond, those cuts will probably have to be about twice as big as they are now.

Nevada is suing the federal government to stop the cuts. What’s at stake?

One of those stakes could be that the Bureau of Reclamation is told to go back and redo its plan to cut water to the lower basin states. That would be chaotic. The last thing water users want is chaos. They want to know how much water they can expect.

Doug Kenney

With lawsuits starting, is there any hope left for states to agree on a plan?

There are two problems on the river. One is stopping the current trajectory of reservoirs dropping. And that’s a heavy lift. But if you manage to do that, then there’s the other problem of rebuilding those reservoirs. Which requires even further conservation and cuts.

We have to rebuild some storage in those reservoirs. At the moment, we’ve decided let’s just deal with what we have to deal with immediately—this short term crisis—and even that’s proving to be a lift that the states can’t do themselves. And the federal government has had to step in.

Their plan doesn’t force water cuts for upper basin states like Colorado. Can we get out of this crisis without mandatory cuts in the upper basin?

The upper basin is tricky here in that it uses significantly less water than it was promised. And people in the upper basin will tell you, this is the deal they made a century ago in the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

So when you talk to the upper basin states about conserving water on any sort of permanent basis, that’s the sticking point that you’re going to get is people saying ‘we were promised this water.’

The scientists will say this is a different river than 100 years ago. So you have that sort of impasse. If the upper basin could just cap what they’re using today, long term, that would be tremendously helpful. And that might very well happen. But I don’t think the upper basin would want to commit to that in any sort of formal way.

Then how do we get out of this crisis?

A truly long-term sustainable solution has to look at the fact that we’re using 75 percent of the water in agriculture. And some of that agriculture I think is going to just have to go away. So the policy decision there is: Which agriculture goes away? And does it just go away through bankruptcies, and let the market do what the market does? Or do we do that in a structured and more humane manner, such as a federal program to buy out large amounts of it?

But when you start talking about retiring a lot of agriculture, that’s not popular. There’s no easy way out of this.

Is the fate of the river heading to the US Supreme Court?

I would guess we end up in interstate litigation. I’m not sure of that, but I think the odds of that happening are greater than 50-50 in my mind. But you have to appreciate that no negotiation and no court fight creates water. The weather systems create water. And as long as the earth continues to heat, this basin figures to get drier and drier.

Twenty years from now, we’re gonna look back and say, ‘Oh, those were the days when we got healthy snowpack,’ and ‘Oh boy, we had it good back then.’ That’s the trajectory we’re on in terms of the climate part of this.

Is there anything that gives you hope for the river’s future?

Hope comes from the fact that at some point, Mother Nature imposes cuts. At some point, the water just isn’t there and people have to be creative and do more with less or at least try to do the same with less. And there’s a good track record of doing that.

The southwest is a great example. Las Vegas over the last 30 plus years has been the fastest growing big city in America. And during that period, they slashed their water use dramatically. Other cities have been on the same trajectory: Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson have shown that they can use a lot less water. And that’s really encouraging.

It’s tougher to save water in agriculture. But there are some things we can do to adapt. Some of it’s technology. Some of it’s using different systems for irrigating crops. It’s also changing to different crops. There are tools in the toolbox here.

But it’s really hard to get that sort of adaptation going as long as you’re still in the mindset that the other guy is the problem, and what I do is fine. That mindset stops a lot of good innovations from happening.

There are 30 tribal nations with a stake in this river as well. What can we learn from them?

They say, ‘Why is there a table with seven chairs. Why is it only seven states negotiating? There should be at least 37 chairs.’ They should be involved in this process at every level. And by and large they aren’t.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes have dubbed their portion of the river as basically having personhood status. It is a living independent being. It’s important, I think, to challenge the rest of the users in the basin to think about the obligation we have to the river itself. Because that’s just not a viewpoint that comes up in these negotiations, but it really needs to.

The federal government just unveiled an aggressive plan to help conserve the mighty Colorado. Will it work? And if not, what will? Water policy veteran Doug Kenney offers insight.

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The Colorado River flows near the Hite Marina in Utah. (Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk with aerial support from LightHawk)

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The Colorado River flows near Hite Marina in Utah. (Credit: Alexander Heilner/The Water Desk with aerial support from LightHawk)

Chernobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later

Megan M Rogers — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 18:19:15 +0000

Chernobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later Megan M Rogers Fri, 08/28/2026 - 12:19

Forty years ago this month, Soviet officials issued their first formal report on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster—four months after the accident. ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� political scientist Sarah Wilson Sokhey says the underlying lesson of the catastrophe is that the risk has not gone away—and such disasters don’t recognize national borders.

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When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:28:06 +0000

When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one Megan M Rogers Thu, 08/27/2026 - 08:28

Who decides to stay behind when climate disaster strikes? ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� sociologist Lori Hunter examines how gender, social expectations and other factors shape the choice—or ability—to leave.

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Open house: Giving communities a voice in housing decisions

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:23:21 +0000

Open house: Giving communities a voice in housing decisions Megan M Rogers Thu, 08/27/2026 - 08:23

In a new book, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� communication scholar Matthew Koschmann examines participatory housing in the Philippines and the broader lessons it offers for involving communities in decisions that affect their lives.

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What does a scientist look like?

Megan M Rogers — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:21:11 +0000

What does a scientist look like? Megan M Rogers Fri, 08/21/2026 - 13:21

In STEM, the stereotypes go beyond gender, asserts social psychology doctoral candidate Sheba Aikawa.

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War is hell. CU research finds some conflicts have a persistent risk of escalating

Scott Franz — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:35:59 +0000

War is hell. CU research finds some conflicts have a persistent risk of escalating Scott Franz Wed, 08/12/2026 - 09:35

An EA-18G Growler assigned to Electronic Attack Squadron 140 launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations, Aug. 10, 2026. The ship is supporting maritime security in the Middle East. (Courtesy/U.S. Navy)

Scott Franz

Military leaders frequently underestimate how big the wars they engage in will get.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur predicted U.S. troops could come home from the Korean War in time for Christmas, just months after the conflict started. But Chinese attacks that winter extended the war for years.

And President Donald Trump said in March that the Iran war would be a “short-term excursion,” but it’s now lasted more than five months with periods of escalation.

Research led by ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� into how wars become more intense over time highlights the many risks of engaging in them. It also underscores why it’s hard for anyone to predict their scope.

“War is inherently very unpredictable once it gets started,” said Aaron Clauset, a professor of computer science at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� and the lead author of the statistical study. “The history of war and escalation indicates that any leader who claims that a war will be small is likely fooling both themselves and the public.”

Men of the 3rd Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division, cover up behind rocks to shield themselves from exploding mortar shells, near the Hantan River in central Korea during the Korean War in 1951. Research led by ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� finds that escalation is "remarkably common" in war. (Photo by the Signal Corps, U.S. Army)

The study, published Aug. 5 in Science Advances, looked for patterns in the progression of civil and interstate wars, primarily from 1946 to 2008. It specifically used data on how many soldiers died in battle each year of a specific conflict to measure how wars escalated and de-escalated.

It found that while large civil wars tend to cool off over time, wars between nations “exhibit a persistent risk of continual escalation.” It also found that escalation in war is “remarkably common.”

“The data showed there’s no systemic tendency for wars to get bigger or smaller,” Clauset said. “Each additional year of fighting carries roughly a 10% chance of doubling in severity and about a 1% chance of increasing by 10 times.”

Clauset said the analysis also shows that wars don’t get big just because they last an especially long time. Ones that start with large death tolls also aren’t necessarily destined to grow into larger conflicts.

Instead, Clauset said escalation dynamics, not a war’s duration or initial intensity, is the primary mechanism that causes an armed conflict to grow to enormous sizes.

Ratcheting up

Unexpected things can happen during a war, like the entrance of a new ally or the expansion of a war to a new region. Such shifts can affect the decisions being made by each side.

Ceasefires and peace talks can also break down.

“When commitments become difficult to keep by either side in a conflict, wars tend to continue and drag on, and that’s how escalation can ratchet up the intensity, which tends to further destabilize previous commitments,” Clauset said.

The volatility caused by escalation shows how even a limited war with just two parties that starts with lower losses of life can grow into a much bigger one.

The study describes war as a volatile process “where violence can build and feed back on itself.”

Aaron Clauset

The research doesn’t give policymakers a way to accurately forecast ongoing and future wars. But Clauset said it could still benefit presidents and policymakers who make wartime decisions.

“Our findings highlight the risks that all conflicts carry,” he said. “The idea that war is uncertain is an old one. Our work shows that escalation risks further amplify that uncertainty, making it extremely difficult to forecast how large a war may ultimately become.”

Forecasting the future

Clauset said research into why wars get big has been limited in the past because of challenges getting data from conflicts that ended decades ago.

Until more recently, it was hard to obtain centralized data of war deaths broken down by year.

The field is showing new potential, he said, thanks to new efforts to track the evolution of conflicts over time. And if researchers could someday get access to even more granular data from individual skirmishes, military decisions, and political negotiations, more could be learned about the evolution of war.

“The more granular the data available to scientists, the better we can likely understand how to prevent escalation from driving large wars,” Clauset said.

By analyzing decades of war death statistics, researchers found large civil wars tend to cool off over time, but wars between nations show a persistent risk of ratcheting up in size.

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Society, Law & Politics

AI used to be a nemesis confined to science fiction. Will it really destroy us all?

Could AI really destroy us all?

How would AI destroy us?

Why are AI doomsday warnings being taken more seriously now?

How do we stop that from happening then?

Can we afford to slow down? Will we lose our competitive edge?

Can we avoid AI doomsday?

Related Articles

25 years after 9/11: The persistence of stereotypes, the willingness to build understanding

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CU historian offers view on how 9/11 changed the Middle East

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Rethinking Mao Zedong's rise and legacy, 50 years later

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'Like driving off a cliff at 2 mph': A water expert's take on what's coming for the Colorado River

Are these cuts to the lower basin states enough to save the river?

Nevada is suing the federal government to stop the cuts. What’s at stake?

With lawsuits starting, is there any hope left for states to agree on a plan?

Their plan doesn’t force water cuts for upper basin states like Colorado. Can we get out of this crisis without mandatory cuts in the upper basin?

Then how do we get out of this crisis?

Is the fate of the river heading to the US Supreme Court?

Is there anything that gives you hope for the river’s future?

There are 30 tribal nations with a stake in this river as well. What can we learn from them?

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Chernobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later

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When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one

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War is hell. CU research finds some conflicts have a persistent risk of escalating

Ratcheting up

Forecasting the future

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