nuclear analogy — Timeline

2026-09-17 — saved image

Benjamin Todd @ben_j_todd · 5h
Guardian attempting to reassure its readers

[image: Guardian excerpt]
'A superintelligent AI poses a threat on the same, possibly, a greater scale' to nuclear weapons – Des Browne, former UK defence secretary, 7 September 2026
"Unfortunately he is entirely correct," said Toby Ord, senior researcher at Oxford University's AI governance initiative. "Just as we can't uninvent the bomb, once we develop AI systems that surpass humanity it would be almost impossible to go back."

But the key point is that superintelligent AI does not yet exist and is not guaranteed to happen. [highlighted in yellow: The safety-oriented AI Futures Project forecasts such a thing will not emerge before December 2028.] OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman has said it could take until 2035.

Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Benjamin Todd's sardonic tweet over a Guardian excerpt in which a former UK defence secretary compares superintelligent AI to nuclear weapons, Toby Ord agrees, and the article offers reassurance that the AI Futures Project forecasts no superintelligence before December 2028 (highlighted in yellow) and Altman says maybe 2035.

superintelligence ai timelines guardian toby ord ai futures project nuclear analogy