Suspected Iranian Nuclear Activities, Growing Loss-Of-Control Risks of AI

The International Atomic Energy Agency has observed construction activity at Iran's Pickaxe Mountain, a site suspected of housing nuclear-related activities. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said there are indications of movement around the construction site, but no concrete information on activities taking place there. The IAEA's board of governors has referred Iran's nuclear file to the UN Security Council for non-compliance with requirements related to its atomic activities.

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned this week, warning that labs are racing toward systems they may not be able to control. Evan Hubinger, who leads Anthropic’s alignment science work, said he sees a greater than 10% chance that AI causes human extinction within the next decade. The figure is clearly subjective, but it shows the depth of concern among leading safety researchers that alignment efforts will fall behind. OpenAI announced in August it is pacing progress to meet the safety standards required by new capability levels, including temporarily slowing frontier training while it strengthens alignment, monitoring and security. The faster capabilities advance, the more quickly safety work must catch up — even as some techniques behind those gains make models harder to understand and monitor. That leaves labs deciding when safety concerns justify slowing progress, even as competition pushes them to keep advancing.

On today's show, Bloomberg This Weekend hosts Christina Ruffini and David Gura speak with:

• Ernest Moniz, Former US Energy Secretary and CEO of the EFI Foundation on Iran's nuclear program and the tight global supplies of diesel
• Max Tegmark, Professor Conducting AI Research at MIT and Chair of the Future of Life Institute on loss-of-control risks of AI agents
• Tom Orlik, Bloomberg Economics, Chief Economist on higher interest rates being the new normal
• Plus, Christina, David, and Lisa Mateo play Pointed: The News Quiz for Risk Takers.

For more conversations like this, watch and listen to Bloomberg This Weekend live on Saturdays and Sundays from 7AM-10AM ET. Watch on Bloomberg Television, listen on Bloomberg Radio and stream the show live on the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg.com/video.

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