These 5 AI risks have the highest potential for catastrophe
Axios
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There is a one-in-five chance of https://www.axios.com/technology/automation-and-ai" target="_blank">AI gaining dangerous weapons capabilities or causing mass harm that could kill millions in the next five years, per global experts surveyed for a recent MIT https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/these-are-most-urgent-ai-risks-according-to-272-experts" target="_blank">study.
Why it matters: The findings add to the growing debate over AI safety and cybersecurity as governments and companies race to deploy increasingly capable systems.
- Last week's news of an OpenAI model breaking containment and breaching the https://www.axios.com/2026/07/21/openai-says-hugging-face-breach-caused-by-one-its-models" target="_blank">AI platform Hugging Face only adds to the debate about what can go wrong.
Driving the news: Researchers from MIT and the University of Queensland in Australia asked 272 international experts to evaluate 24 different risks based on their likelihood and severity between 2025 and 2030.
- The experts said 18 of the 24 AI risks had "at least a 10% probability of catastrophic outcomes over the next five years" — but five main risks stood out with higher probabilities.
- The study defined a "catastrophic outcome" as an event having more than 1 million human deaths, more than $100 billion in financial loss or generally "civilizational-scale intangible impacts."
The five catastrophic risks if companies and organizations stay on the current course include:
- AI possessing dangerous capabilities: Experts say these could potentially cause mass harm through deception, weapons development, cyber offenses and misalignment (21.5%).
- Cyberattacks, weapon development or use, and mass harm: Using AI to develop weapons (including chemical or biological), commit cyberattacks or create mass-harm weapons, like nuclear explosives (21%).
- Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits: Limiting which people or groups benefit from AI could cause societal inequality (18%).
- Competitive dynamics: AI competition to release the best models leads to error-prone systems (16.6%).
- False or misleading information: AI creates misinformation or errors that lead to inaccurate beliefs, leading humans to make poor decisions based on false beliefs (12.8%).
Reality check: The experts said some mitigations could reduce the severity of the AI harms, but the chances of them happening remained above 10% in that scenario.
The big picture: AI safety concerns have continually raised questions about guardrails.
- AI behaviors, as well as the opinions https://www.axios.com/2026/02/26/ai-blog-posts-market-citrini" target="_blank">about those behaviors, can move markets and reshape conversations overnight — leading to https://www.axios.com/2026/02/12/ai-openai-agi-xai-doomsday-scenario" target="_self">doomsday scenarios.
The other side: AI has driven a https://www.axios.com/2026/01/14/ai-jobs-productivity-workslop" target="_self">productivity explosion, with many in the AI field cheering the new technology's ability to improve productivity and automate tasks.
The bottom line: Researchers say catastrophic AI risks remain uncertain but significant enough that interested parties should treat them as challenges to overcome.
Go deeper: https://www.axios.com/2026/07/17/axios-house-ai-is-a-cybersecurity-risk-accelerant-experts-say" target="_blank">AI is a cybersecurity risk accelerant, experts say