By Ian Sample
Publication Date: 2026-02-17 18:01:00
The race to bring artificial intelligence to market has increased the risk of a Hindenburg-style catastrophe that will shake global confidence in the technology, a leading researcher has warned.
Michael Wooldridge, a professor of AI at the University of Oxford, said the danger arises from the enormous commercial pressure facing technology firms to bring new AI tools to market, with companies desperately trying to win customers before the products’ capabilities and potential shortcomings are fully understood.
The rise of AI chatbots with easy-to-evade guardrails shows that commercial incentives are taking precedence over more cautious development and security testing, he said.
“It’s the classic technology scenario,” he said. “You have a technology that is very, very promising but has not been tested as thoroughly as you would like and the commercial pressure behind it is unbearable.”
Wooldridge, who gave the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize Lecture on Wednesday evening entitled “
