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Superintelligent AI and the pathway to total destruction

There is no need for artificial intelligence to be sentient to be a destructive force

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Sharon See

Sharon See

Published Tue, Oct 14, 2025 · 07:00 AM
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    • Given how much corporates and governments have been pushing everyone to use AI, it is somewhat chilling that we are strongly encouraged to adopt a technology we do not quite understand, and whose potential for abuse by rogue actors is enormous.
    • Given how much corporates and governments have been pushing everyone to use AI, it is somewhat chilling that we are strongly encouraged to adopt a technology we do not quite understand, and whose potential for abuse by rogue actors is enormous. PHOTO: PIXABAY

    [SINGAPORE] To those who have reaped productivity gains from large language models (LLMs), artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be a logical progression of technological advancement – the next generation of software making humans more efficient.

    Yet, that is only half correct.

    As a layman, I found it fascinating to learn in a new book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, that AI is not quite software in the traditional sense of programs being hand-coded line by line, but is instead “grown”.

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