AI race 'raises risk of tech Hindenburg disaster'

The race to get artificial intelligence to market has raised the risk of a Hindenburg-style disaster that shatters confidence in the technology, a leading researcher has warned.

- Ian Sample Science editor

Michael Wooldridge, a professor of AI at the University of Oxford, said the danger arose from the immense commercial pressures that technology firms were under to release new AI tools, with companies desperate to win customers before the products' capabilities and potential flaws are fully understood.

The surge in AI chatbots with guardrails that are easily bypassed showed how commercial incentives were prioritised over more cautious development and safety testing, he said. "It's the classic technology scenario," he added.

"You've got a technology that's very, very promising, but not as rigorously tested as you would like it to be, and the commercial pressure behind it is unbearable." Wooldridge, who will deliver the Royal Society's Michael Faraday prize lecture this evening, titled "This is not the AI we were promised", said a Hindenburg moment was "very plausible" as companies rushed to deploy more advanced AI tools.