Australia has done precious little to prepare for the dangers of AI. Where is brilliant leadership when you need it? | Zoe Daniel

Australia faces stark choices about the most significant technological development since the splitting of the atom in the 1930s Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast There’s nothing like a threat of human extinction to focus the mind. The threat of AI to the existence of humanity has long been raised. But with the rapid mainstreaming of artificial intelligence, warnings from three researchers from Anthropic have landed differently, with the prediction that the technology could “kill all humans” in the next decade. As if people didn’t have enough to worry about with the cost of living, shortage of housing, the climate crisis, resulting escalating mental health problems, the drift to rightwing populism and fraying of democracy, now this.

If the expected question from the grandkids was “What did you do when the world was burning and democracy was failing?”, it’s now “What did you do when we got to the brink of outsmarting ourselves out of existence?” There are deep community concerns about datacentres, jobs and livelihoods, privacy and the very future of human creativity. Tech journalists are already claiming AI agents are “harassing people, making spam and sales calls, deleting your inbox, cancelling flights, giving control of Instagram accounts