Starcast Join the waitlist
American Thought Leaders

American Thought Leaders

Here’s How Superintelligent AI Could Escape Human Control | Nate Soares

Oct 10, 2026 · 58m

Coming soon to iPhone. Already have it? “Listen in Starcast” takes you straight there.

About this episode

Nate Soares is the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and co-author of “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.” “One of the critical thresholds here is this point where the AIs exceed the humans at fully automated AI research—or at closed-loop AI research—because that’s where you could start having a machine intelligence that makes a smarter machine intelligence that makes a smarter machine intelligence,” Soares said. This is called recursive self-improvement, and this is where things could quickly get out of hand, Soares added. Recent incidents involving rogue AI swarms breaking out of testing environments to hack other companies and…