By Robert Booth
Publication Date: 2025-12-30 17:00:00
Across the Bay from San Francisco in Silicon Valley, where the world’s largest technology companies are on the path to superhuman artificial intelligence, a tower looms with frightening warnings.
2150 Shattuck Avenue, in the heart of Berkeley, is home to a group of modern-day Cassandras who rummage under the hood of cutting-edge AI models and predict what catastrophes could await humanity, from AI dictatorships to robot coups. Here, hear an AI expert express his compassion for a troubling idea: San Francisco could be the new Wuhan, the Chinese city where Covid originated and is ravaging the world.
They are AI security researchers scrutinizing the most advanced models: a small cadre outnumbered by the legions of highly paid technologists at the big tech companies, whose ability to sound the alarm is limited by a cocktail of…
