Saturday, September 19, 2026
Special Edition: Could AI Really Kill Us?
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AI “doomsday” warnings have been around for years, but lately, they’ve started to feel less theoretical.
MIT researcher Dr. Neil Thompson explains how realistic catastrophic AI risks actually are, why concern is growing now, and what recent incidents may tell us about where the technology is headed.
Plus, we discuss what it would realistically take to prevent the worst-case scenarios…
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Guest: Dr. Neil Thompson
Dr. Neil Thompson is the Director of the FutureTech research group, and Principle Research Scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), and at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) within the Sloan School of Management. Guided by Dr. Thompson’s leadership, the FutureTech group researches the cutting edge and most important trends driving progress in computing and AI, how these trends underpin scientific progress and economic prosperity, and produces rigorous insights that broaden humanity’s knowledge, and inform policy and industry decisions.
Since founding MIT FutureTech in 2019, Dr. Thompson’s research group has attracted over $25M in funding and has grown to be one of the largest research groups at MIT, with over 110 researchers. Dr. Thompson maintains research partnerships with leading organizations such as Google, IBM, Amazon, Accenture, Microsoft, Los Alamos National Labs, and others.
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