When A.I. Goes Rogue

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.In May, I met a former Google software engineer named Nate Soares. He was giving a talk about a book he co-wrote called “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.” The “it” is artificial superintelligence: A.I. that out-thinks humans across the board. Soares, you might have guessed, is concerned that the A.I. race poses a threat to humanity’s survival. And he told me he was baffled that more journalists weren’t writing about this.Our conversation stuck with me, but I, too, didn’t write about it afterward. Other issues seemed more pressing: the risk that A.I. could cause mass unemployment, or the shifting politics of data cente