A current debate is whether artificial intelligence (AI) is a force for good or bad; or perhaps both.
What follows is the argued opinion of the author – it is not the inevitable outcome of current AI development.
On August 26, 2026, Bill Gates published a 6,000 word memo on his personal website, titled The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical. It starts, “The transition to the AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. Right now, we are not preparing adequately for that transition. If the world takes the right steps, AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off.”
The implication is that AI contains danger if we don’t behave responsibly toward it, but that we can and will probably learn to behave responsibly. Overall, AI is likely to be a force for good.
Not everybody agrees. Responding to a tweet on X from Jacob Coxon, Evan Hubinger (a safety researcher at Anthropic leading the firm’s Alignment Science org) replied on September 9, 2026, “Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”
Could Misaligned AI Kill Us All?
Coxon, a former AI researcher at both OpenAI and Anthropic, had suggested “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Hubinger’s reply focuses on ‘alignment’, saying we cannot yet control it. Alignment in AI is the assurance that AI actions are tied to its developer’s intentions. Misalignment, in the vernacular, is what allows AI models to go rogue – to take unintended actions that can result in attacking unintended targets. Hubinger is saying that we are not on track to solving this problem.